This paper is based on a group of 15 texts from Nuzi that are concerned with barley deliveries to the queen and her retinue. These texts are currently published only in cuneiform except for two of them, which have been edited by Maynard P. Maidman in SBLWAW 18 (n. 2 and 3) with a short comment. I will present an overall picture of this text set by identifying the individuals and the group that forms the retinue.

This paper considers the cultic role of the Phoenician mother of King Eshmunazor (KAI 14) as a priest of Astarte by comparing both other Phoenician evidence of women religious functionaries and other Syro-Canaanite evidence (especially from Emar) for women priests of Astarte. These data are then compared to certain biblical data concerning female cult functionaries, in order to assess under what conditions women's religious leadership within the West Semitic world was best facilitated.

The discovery of the phenomenon of sequential hypertextual reworking in the Bible solves numerous problems of biblical exegesis. With the use of the rules of critical intertextual research, the existence and direction of direct literary dependence between biblical (and other) texts can be established. In the case of the Pentateuch, this type of research demonstrates that Deuteronomy (written c.500 BC) is an Israelite sequential hypertextual reworking of Ezekiel, and that Genesis and Exodus-Numbers (written c.400 BC) are likewise Israelite sequential hypertextual reworkings of Deuteronomy. Consequently, the theories of the existence of the so-called sources or traditions of the Pentateuch (J, E, D, P, etc.) are ultimately disproved, so that the transmission-historical research may be largely replaced with critical intertextual research. The hypertextual relationships which exist between the books of the Pentateuch may be shown with the use of the example of the Pentateuchal reworkings of the motif of the ‘original sin’ and the ensuing exile. This motif was first introduced in Ezek 4-24 as referring to the sins of the Judaeans, which caused their forty-year-long exile from the Holy Land (esp. Ezek 4:6). It was later reworked in Deut 1:26-2:1 as referring to the para-historical ‘original sin’ of the Israelites and to their forty-year-long expulsion from the Promised Land to the wilderness. Still later, it was reworked in a mythopoeic way in Gen 3 as referring to the ‘original sin’ of first humans and to their expulsion from the Paradise to a barren land. Probably at roughly the same time, it was reworked in Exod 2:11-15 as referring to the ‘original sin’ of Moses and to his exile from Egypt to the wilderness.

The discovery of the phenomenon of sequential hypertextual reworking in the Bible solves numerous problems of biblical exegesis. With the use of the rules of critical intertextual research, the existence and direction of direct literary dependence between biblical (and other) texts can be established. In the case of the Synoptic Gospels, this type of research demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark (written c. AD 100-110) is a sequential hypertextual reworking of Paul’s letters (Gal, 1 Cor, Rom, and 1 Thes), that the Gospel of Luke (written c. AD 110-120) is likewise a sequential hypertextual reworking of Paul’s letters (esp. Gal and Rom), and that the Gospel of Matthew (written c. AD 135-140) is a sequential hypertextual reworking of the Acts of the Apostles. Consequently, the theory of the existence of the so-called Q source is ultimately disproved. The hypertextual relationships which exist between the Synoptic Gospels may be shown with the use of the example of the synoptic reworkings of the motif of forgiveness on the occasion of prayer. This motif originates from Rom 11:22cd, which refers to God’s generosity and the believers’ participation in it. It was first developed in Mk 11:25 as referring to the Father’s and the believers’ forgiveness of trespasses on the occasion of prayer. Later, it was reworked in Lk 11:2-4 as referring to the model of the believers’ forgiving prayer as related to the Father’s forgiveness of sins. Still later, it was reworked in an artificially scripturalized way in Mt 6:9-13 as likewise referring to the model of the believers’ forgiving prayer as related to the Father’s forgiveness of debts.

Several scholars have interpreted the Bible in such a way that the continent and the people of Africa have been noted to have played key roles in the Old Testament and New Testament. Notable among these scholars are Charles Copher (1993), David Adamo (2006) and Edwin M. Yamauchi (2006). They have been able to point out from the Bible different African countries and personalities who have been made obscured by the Eurocentric interpretations of Western scholars who have read Africans out of the Bible. Their aim is not only to challenge the de-Africanization of the Bible but also to positively present Africans in the Bible with a view to encouraging African Christians. Interpreting Acts 8: 26-40, Adamo (2006), for instance, presents the eunuch in the text as a powerful African man who was humble and hospitable. The eunuch receives praises in Adamo’s article. In contrast, this paper re-reads Acts 8: 26-40 and seeks to establish the fact that the portrayal of the eunuch is not as positive as Adamo and others would want their readers to believe. The paper adopts linguistic analysis and exegetical approaches.

The movie, Lars and the Real Girl, is a quirky comedy about a young man who, in his desperate attempt to establish human relationships with others, buys an artificial, life-size female doll. When his family and neighbors discover that Lars has formed a delusional relationship with Bianca, they try to help him but eventually share in his delusion. Yet this movie does not merely depict a severely neurotic man and the unorthodox psychotherapy that cures him. It raises important questions about the communal, virtual formation of reality and the limits of the human. Bianca is not merely a sex toy but a full-body prosthesis, an artificial person and “son of man,” and she “gives her life” (Mark 10:45), such as it is, to heal not only Lars but the entire community. This essay draws upon theoretical work by Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Katherine Hayles, and Tzvetan Todorov.

In recent years it became more and more obvious that there was a more or less late redaction, which aimed at the formation of a Hexateuch (E. Blum, E. Otto). It is, however, still an open question, where the redactional activity can be identified, which intended to establish the Pentateuch as the formation document of Judaism, after the decision against the Hexateuch was made. One passage, which may have been created for this purpose, can possibly be found in Num 25-36, which does not only include pieces of a late priestly legislation, but also function to prepare the conditions for conquering and distributing the land according to the ideals of late priestly authors. Therefore, these chapters may have served as a substitute of the book of Joshua within the range of the Pentateuch. What originally was told in Joshua as events of the past, was now kept as a future perspective in Numbers. The lecture intends to show, whether such a suggestion can be verified or not.

The law concerning the stone altar in Exodus 20:25-26 has undergone an extensive adaptation in Deut. 27:5-7. It seems quite obvious that the reworking has been done on theological grounds. Biblical scholars (M. Noth and others) have already pointed out pointed out that the law in Exodus reflects a unique ancient belief, perhaps a superstition which, I believe, the author of Deut. 27:5-7 could not tolerate, and for that reason he reworked the law in order to remove any trace of that belief. Furthermore, it seems that the present form of the law in Exod 20:25-26 is itself not the original form, but rather the result of textual emendations made by scribe[s] for the same purpose, namely, to avoid the theological problem. My intention is to reconstruct the original form of Ex. 20:25-26 and, based on comparative analysis of other biblical writings and an extra-biblical document, to discuss the exact unorthodox belief it reflects which has gone unrecognized in previous research.

The name of Kleodemos Malchos is one of many reminders to the rich, extensive and now lost literature of antiquity. The sole testimony for his life and works which has survived to modern times appears in Josephus (Antiquities 1.240-241), and is quoted from Josephus by Eusebius (Praeparatio Euangelica 9.20.2-4). Modern scholarly attention has been drawn by the strange information contained in the Kleodemos fragment: two sons of Abraham from Ketoura - Apheras and Iaphras - have joined Herakles in his Libyan campaign against Antaios and gave Libya its African name. In addition, a daughter of one of the sons (granddaughter of Abraham) wedded Herakles, and the two had spawned the Libyan nation of the Sophakes. The paucity of information, however, has limited the scope of the discussion. My intention in this paper is to attempt a contextualization of the Kleodemos fragment, departing from two distinct "African" elements in his story: (a) the etiology of Africa, which puts the story in a Roman context, specifically the Punic Wars and the creation of provincia Africa; and (b) the Antaios myth, which since the 7th century BC had served European invaders and colonists of Libya. More particularly, I hope to show that Kleodemos' story should indeed be read against the background of the Punic Wars, especially the propagandistic use made of the Herakles myth by Regulus, Hannibal and Scipio the elder, the echoes whereof are still heard in the poetry of Lucan and Silius Italicus. If my analysis is correct, the Kleodemos fragment can be dated tentatively to the general area of the third Punic War, and can be shown to be a mythical middle ground addressing Greek, Roman, Punic, Numidian and Jewish cultures.

The study of Monotheism has attempted, for the most part, to reach a definition of the phenomenon, and to locate its first appearance in history. I offer an alternative approach: looking at the huge conglomerate of monotheistic (or Abrahamic) religions as intuitively recognized today, and tracing the ideological principles which define this group. This approach may allow us to write, for the first time, a comprehensive account of Monotheism in antiquity. An obvious and formidable obstacle is the vast array of fields and disciplines involved – surely beyond the capability of any single scholar. The only way in which the stupendous amount of data can be gathered and processed is through wide-reaching collaboration by specialists in various necessary fields. Which is where Wiki comes in. Wiki technology has proven in the last decade its utility in creating the world’s biggest-ever encyclopedia. Furthermore, it is excellently suited for lateral reading, a powerful method when dealing with plentiful and multidisciplinary data. In the last three years I have set up a Wikisite at the University of Haifa (http://amitay.haifa.ac.il), in order to gain working experience with Wiki. So far it has proven a big success, and expanded to form a Wiki spearhead in the Faculty of Humanities, and a nascent collaboration with Hebrew Wikipedia. The use of Wiki technology for the study of ancient Monotheism transcends, in my mind, the important (yet limited) goals of improving pedagogy and scholarly communication in two principal ways. Firstly, as mentioned above, without the means for collaboration such a topic cannot be tackled at all. Quantity thus becomes quality. Secondly, the hypertextuality which underlies Wiki technology creates a distinct web of information. It would thus be possible to experiment with the application of the new advances in web-theory in order to explore the complex evolution of Monotheism.

The Mesopotamian commentary texts are the product of Babylonian scientific thinking. The commentaries reflect the efforts of Babylonian scientist to reach a deeper understanding of the literary, religious and scientific knowledge handed down by the “stream of tradition”. On one hand these tablets shed light on ancient philology from the point of view of lexical glosses, with a clearly distinguishable method using the tools of giving synonyms as well as other linguistic and substantive interpretations of the deeper sense of texts. Another way can be followed to reach this goal that is one can discover this deeper sense of such a texts during which one can achieve multiple literal meaning by way of speculative text explanation Relating to medical texts, commentaries were prepared to accompany diagnostic and physiognomic omen series, incantations as well as therapeutic texts. These sources can be traced back to Neo-Assyrian and Late-Babylonian periods. Thus far research has mainly identified commentary texts accompanying tablets of the physiognomic and diagnostic series, while commentaries attached to therapeutic texts have received little attention. The paper aims at presenting the method of interpretation in the Mesopotamian medical commentaries on the basis of one concrete therapeutic text. I will identify the association schemes implemented by the ancient scholars between the illnesses, the causers of diseases and the applied materia medica. On the course of my analyse I intend to discover some similarities between Babylonian commentary methods and the text interpretation processes of the rabbinic exegesis..

Divine council was a wide-spread concept in the ancient Near East. It was widely believed that the divine beings constitute an assembly, and the council decides on the fate of people and Earth. The council’s decision was mediated to people trough a messenger, a prophet, who could participate in the assembly. Not much scholarly discussion has been devoted to the fact that the tradition of the divine council shows its vitality even in the late Second Temple period, e.g., in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this paper I examine the image of the divine council in the Hodayot. I discuss on the relevant Hodayot passages, arguing that one coherent image of the divine council cannot be constructed. Instead, the descriptions of the divine council vary from one hymn and passage to another. I highlight the themes and motifs related to the divine council such as the presence and absence of prophetic activity, the nature of God’s secrets and the identity of the messenger. I demonstrate how these themes are related on the one hand to wisdom books such as Job and Ben Sira and on the other hand to Dead Sea Scrolls such as the Community Rule and Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

Using paleographic methods which presume a simple genealogical development of scripts, scholars have unscientifically dated numerous Coptic manuscripts by their Greek hand. Typically, the dates are earlier than what manuscript provenance would suggest or allow. This paper reviews the primary witnesses to the Sahidic text of Revelation, and considers how best to date these manuscripts. Additionally, the presentation will discuss the relevance of these dates to the creation of an Editio Critica Maior for the Apocalypse.

One of the most fascinating issues in the study of Midrash is the creation and editing of the Tanhuma corpus. Careful study of the sources of the Tanhuma can shed light on this issue. The analysis of the sources of a Midrash can teach us about its date, and the methods employed in its redaction. To date, scholars have addressed the relations between the Tanhuma and the classical midrashim such as Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah. The Tanhuma midrashim on other biblical books has remained largely neglected in this context, since we do not have classical midrashim on these books for comparison. In my paper, I intend to present the findings of a detailed study I have conducted on the relationship between the Tanhuma on Exodus and sections of the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana that contain homilies on portions of the book of Exodus. I believe that these findings may have significant ramifications for our understanding of the process of the creation and process of redaction of the whole Tanhuma corpus.

Just as literary sources have been examined for their potential impact, examining art as a valid source of inspiration offers a new lens to explore the potential influences of Greco-Roman society on New Testament writers. This paper will examine Pompeiian depictions of the sleeping Ariadne and propose that the visual collapsing of events, the resulting imagery of immediacy, and its attitude towards sleep influenced the writer of Luke 22:39-49. Ariadne’s sleep functions as a transitional state between her two roles, one as a passive human female, and the other as divine bride. Abandoned by Theseus for whom she died to her family, she is heartbroken, but her marriage to Dionysus leads to her immortality. In the course of the paper several questions based on Erwin Panofsky’s methodological approach will be assessed in relation to representations (“What was the context in which it was displayed?) and type (“Are there motifs, themes, or conceptions in the visual medium, which prove more or less constant? What does the adoption of this type mean?). This will be combined with questions from the Freiburg school, notably Othmar Keel’s methodological approach to motif: “Which phenomenon is represented? How are motif and statement connected? What is the intention of the decorations?” Luke paints a verbal picture of Jesus and his disciples on a mountain in Luke 22:39-49. Sleep in Luke effectively collapses events to create a sense of simultaneous and congruent action between Jesus and his disciples. The author of Luke uses sleep to convey a transition that is closely associated with despair and death, yet this sequence of events leads to resurrection and immortality.

Numbers 20-21 recount the journeys of the Israelites around and through the lands of Edom and Moab, as well as some of the episodes that took place in those areas. Although most scholars have recognized that these chapters are not a unity, there has been little consensus on which parts go together, how they connect to other parts of the pentateuchal narrative, and whether they are continuous or not. This paper will offer a new source-critical solution to Numbers 20-21.

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When Christians first encountered the indigenous peoples of the New World, they could not conceive of any interrelationship between the Bible and the sacred writings and traditions of the indigenous. The very suggestion of such an interrelationship would have been dismissed as ludicrous. Indeed, many Spanish and Portuguese Christians assumed that Scripture had to be imposed on the native peoples for their own good. The burning of indigenous codices and the suppression of indigenous religions as idolatry were taken by many as a matter of course. However, there was a group of Christians who not only struggled for the rights of the indigenous but were also open to their wisdom traditions, both written and oral. These Christians found that both Biblical and indigenous wisdom traditions could serve to interpret each other and complete their respective lacunae. In our paper, we will explore the intertexuality between Wisdom Literature in the Bible and indigenous wisdom traditions as it is found in the writings of such Christian indigenists as Vasco de Quiroga (1470? - 1565), Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1586), Bernardino de Sahagún (1500? - 1590), and Gerónimo de Mendieta (1525-1604); and we will draw conclusions about the capacity of wisdom literature to serve as a bridge between cultures and religions, even those engaged in violent clashes with each other.

For Jerome reading Ecclesiastes, some of the book’s most determinative intertextual relationships are with other biblical texts which give content to the ‘Israel’ over which Qohelet is king. This paper will examine the different layers of reference in Jerome’s exegesis of Qohelet’s Israel, asking whether this can contribute anything to our own understanding of the way community functions within Ecclesiastes.

The rich collection of Josef Chaim Kaufman includes a large number of bullae which belong to the group called "Fiscal Bullae". Presently we know more than 50 bullae of this type. They comprise of two groups, one with names of cities in the Kingdom of Judah, and the other with names of royal officials. Both groups have regnal years either in words or in hieratic Egyptian numerals. All the published bullae come from the antiquities market, but recently one was discovered in the sifting project of soil originating from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and yet another comes from the dig of R. Reich in the City of David. Those bullae originating in controlled archaeological projects authenticate all the others from unknown provenance. The Bullae include names of 20 different cities of Judah as well as the particle "lmlk", "from the king". The different components of the inscriptions of these bullae will be discussed, as they are a unique source for the study of the taxation system of the Judean Kingdom. The comparison between the list of cities in the list the "fiscal bullae" shows close connections with the list of Judean cities in Joshua 15: 20-63 and Joshua 18: 21-28. We date the "fiscal bullae" to the time of King Manasseh (698 – 642 BCE). The bullae have contributed to many subjects such as the geographical history of Judah, the date of the restoration of Lachish (Level II) after it was destroyed by Sennacherib, the coregency of Menasheh and Hezekiah and many others. The discovery of a "fiscal bulla" with the name of Gibeon, originating from the Eastern slope of the Temple Mount enables a penetrating and comprehensive study of the entire phenomenon of the "fiscal bullae", including a fresh study of those in the Kaufman collection.

The book of Jeremiah aims to shape the identity of the survivors of Jerusalem’s destruction as the powerless people who trust in YHWH’s power alone. One noteworthy example of this arises from the two parallel rejections of the prophetic word by the remnant of Judah in Jeremiah 42 and 44. The parallel is marked not only by the predicted deaths of the rebels by sword, famine, and pestilence until there are no survivors, but also by the escapees’ motivating desire to avoid war and famine by responding to powers other than YHWH. In chapter 42, the remnant insists against the prophet on a political strategy: they will go to Egypt in order to avoid the wrath of the king of Babylon for the assassination of Gedaliah. In chapter 44, they insist on a cultic strategy: they worship the Queen of Heaven to avoid experiencing her wrath. In both cases, YHWH claims through Jeremiah to be the only power with which they must reckon. YHWH superintends over the Babylonian king, and the Queen of Heaven is nothing. The parallel draws together two seemingly disparate offenses of deference to political and divine powers. This identity-formational move is only one example within the larger book of Jeremiah where the survivors of Jerusalem’s destruction are shaped into people who disregard all seemingly competing powers of whatever form apart from YHWH. The resulting self-understanding of these powerless refugees goes beyond monolatry (worshipping the one God YHWH) and monotheism (believing in the existence of the one God YHWH) to become the people who respond to YHWH as the one and only power who exercises control over their well-being.

In terms of Ecclesiastes and the New Testament attention is normally focused on Romans where Paul may be referring to Ecclesiastes. This paper will argue that there is a much fuller relationship between Ecclesiastes and the New Testament, not least in relationship to the Gospels. Foregrounding this relationship will depend on how we read Ecclesiastes as a whole and on how we understand intertextuality. Both these issues will be briefly reviewed and the case made for exploring the relationship between Ecclesiastes and the Gospels in the context of seeing Jesus portrayed inter alia as the fulfillment of OT wisdom. The relationship between wisdom motifs in the Gospels and Ecclesiastes will be explored with a particular focus on the celebration of the ordinary – eating, drinking, and enjoying the wife of one’s youth – as it surfaces in Ecclesiastes and the Gospels. This theme of the ordinary will be developed in dialogue with Auerbach’s remarkable work on this theme in the Gospels in his classic "Mimesis." It will be argued that exploration of this intertextuality illumines both Ecclesiastes and the ministry of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels in fresh ways, as well as helping to define “intertextuality” most productively.

Two of the Jesus films stand out for their unusual, complex and powerful soundtracks: Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) and Dornford-May’s Son of Man (2006). In the 48 years since it was made, Pasolini’s film has been the object of study in a wide range of publications. In contrast, Dornford-May’s film has not received much attention from scholars: a relatively new film, it has been neither widely distributed nor widely publicized. But recently, the film has garnered attention at several academic conferences; one critical study of the film has been made and a book on the film will be published next year. Though some dimensions of the soundtracks of both films are mentioned in the criticism, there has been no systematic study of these soundtracks. This paper proposes to fill this gap. The basic point of the paper is to study the effect that these socially-politically charged soundtracks has on the character of Jesus proposed, on the operative christology at work, and on the shifting away of the film from the biblical narrative it represent. The paper will consider the radical quality of the music and song in the films by first identifying the diverse elements of their soundtracks. Then it will consider the meaning and significance of these elements in themselves (as individual pieces of music and song), in their collocation within the films and in their repetition and dynamic interplay. And finally, the paper will suggest how both Pasolini and Dornford-May carefully structure these sound elements into the narratives of their films as essential and complementary dimensions of their revolutionary themes and strategies, and as a powerful aural dimension of the revolutionary figure of Jesus represented in each film.

Ezra 4 is part of a narrative that mainly by the presentation of an exchange of letters narrates about the rebuilding of the temple in post-exilic Jerusalem. An important part of this narrative is the way in which opposition and obstruction were overcome. The delimitation of the various smaller parts of this narrative is not prima facie clear. A look at some recent translations shows that the paragraphing of Ezra 3-6 is construed quite differently. Some of them construe Ezra 4:6 as the beginning of the writing of letters by Bislam and his friends. Others construe the verse as part of the section 4,1-6. The Masoretic Codex L has a setuma after 4,6. In case this indication for paragraphing can be reinforced by ancient manuscripts, a more clear interpretation of Ezra 4,1-6 can be developed. In my view this would imply that the narrator presents the view that the obstruction by ‘the people of the land’ against the rebuilding project endured until the reign of Artaxerxes.

2012 marked the centenary of the death of the Utrecht Old Testament scholar J.J.P. Valeton (1848-1912). He was a representative of the 'via media' approach of Dutch theology, which was aiming at joining critical scholarship and piety, by avoiding the pitfalls of modernism as well as orthodoxy. Valeton accepted the critical analysis of Graf, Kuenen, and Wellhausen, but meanwhile remained a pious person. This paper will discuss Valeton's contributions to critical scholarship of Genesis 1-3.

The account of Moses’ call in Exod 3:1-4:17 is clearly a text of great significance; it marks the beginning of Moses’ divinely-conferred mission and sets in motion the whole following pentateuchal narrative with God’s announcement of his intention to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and lead them into a land of their own (see 3:7-8). At the same time, the extant passage appears problematic in various respects. For one thing, there is considerable repetition throughout it—a feature that has scholars to posit different sources or strata behind the present text. In addition, the portrayal of Moses throughout the passage appears none too flattering: he comes across as fearful, distrustfull and recalcitrant in the face of God’s repeated assurances to him—so much so that the Deity finally loses his temper with him (see 4:14). In this paper, I will focus on two ancient retellings of the biblical story of Moses’ call, i.e. those of Josephus in Ant. 2.264b-276 and Philo’s Life of Moses 1.65-84. Specifically, I will compare the two retellings both in relation to their biblical source and to each other in order to see how Josephus and Philo have dealt with the above problematic features of the biblical account and whether there is convergence between them in this respect. My presentation will likewise seek to highlight what is distinctive about each author’s retelling.

It is appropriate for a session that wraps up the multi-year work of our seminar on historical methodology to raise some general issues for further thought and discussion. With this in mind, the first part of this paper will pragmatically explore some issues in the reconstructions of ancient Israelite history in light of certain debates on historical methodology and recent studies on, for instance, the contingency of historical writing, social memory or which are part a global comparative historiographical project, and vice versa. This section will conclude with a brief discussion of some potential, more general implications of these explorations and lead to the second part of the paper in which questions of professional/academic locations affecting the current production of historical research about ancient Israel will be raised.

The relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth is systematically defined by most New Testament scholars and historians of Christianity - especially those of Christian provenance - in terms such as "contrast", "radical difference" or "parting of the ways". Nevertheless, many phenomenological parallels that the sources permit to establish between these two Palestinian preachers are usually (and surprisingly) overlooked, and several supposed differences between them do not exist or are exaggerated, as they are not important enough to build a contrastive image. This conclusion allows us to suspect that the overwhelming idea that a sharp opposition between John and Jesus existed is an untenable view and the result of a distortion of the available data due to ideological (more specifically, theological) prejudices. Although, according to a current claim, theological interests and constraints are no longer present in the scholarly research on the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, this is merely wishful thinking. My paper aims at analysing the treatment of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist carried out in several representative monographs published in the last twenty years on the Galilean preacher, in order to show that they contain a good number of unfounded inferences and incongruities. In fact, the idea of an alleged strong contrast between John and Jesus has a striking similarity to the classical opposition between Jesus and Judaism, to the extent that such a contrast could be considered as a last avatar of the long process of de-Judaization of Jesus.

1 Maccabees 15:28-36 records a diplomatic exchange over disputed cities and territories between Simon, Judas Maccabaeus’ brother, and the Seleucid king Antiochus VII. In verses 33-34, Simon argues that the Jews/Judeans have not seized foreign lands that belonged to others, but have simply taken back “the heritage of our fathers.” Many scholars have interpreted Simon’s reply as a self-evident indication that the Hasmonean dynasty saw itself as reconquering the Promised Land. Moreover, it is this passage alone that is always quoted by scholars in support of such a theory. However, a closer analysis of the text shows that it has probably been over-interpreted. Through the analysis of the literary construction of the passage and of its connections with both Biblical traditions on the one hand, and Seleucid rhetoric as presented in 1 Maccabees itself on the other hand, I shall propose a different way of reading the text. It will be shown that Simon’s discourse cannot be seen through the lens of Biblical intertextuality only, and that it needs to be compared with ways of arguing about one’s legitimate right to possess a territory in the Hellenistic world at large.

This paper will explain the problematic context within which Irenaeus must establish the importance of Christian texts which are not prophetic or apostolic, texts like Hermas, and Clement, texts which he wishes to venerate. The problem is that his context includes, for instance, those like Marcus who believes his knowledge is greater than the apostles and who seduces women into "prophesying" by means of Charis, a practice Irenaeus views as Satanic. How can he, then, authorize extra-prophetic and extra-apostolic works within the catholic community (Hermas, Clement), while he demonizes Marcus and his female "prophetesses?" He does it, in one way (although there are other responses as well, including the definition of true charismata not treated here), I will argue (and this is the substance of my paper), by establishing a catholic taxonomy for texts: Within the Church there exists "Scripture," and texts classified and received as "Scripture" are valid, ecclessiological writings. Now, "Scripture" includes the foundational writings of the prophets, apostles, and evangelists. It also, however, for Irenaeus, includes non-foundational texts written by those who knew the apostles and who transmitted their teaching (e.g., Hermas, Clement). The "revelatory" fruits of his opponents, like Marcus's 'knowledge" and the prophecies his prophetesses, are not worthy of the Church. They, unlike other early post-prophetic and post-apostolic texts are not "Scripture."

The proto-Karaite Anan ben David, in his 'Book of Precepts', prohibited self-circumcision, based on the Niphal forms in Gen 17. A similar train of thought also appears in the Tanhuma (Warsaw edition, Lekh Lekha 17), with the conclusion that Abraham miraculously found himself circumcised. Beside the very much understandable practical reasons… why is self-circumcision rejected in these theory-driven sources? It is noteworthy that no such prohibition exists in rabbinic halakhah (cf. e.g., Mishne Torah, Milah 1:2 and 2:1), and Gen 17 is most often understood as Abraham circumcising himself, eventually with divine help (Gen. Rab. 49:1, Tanhuma Vayera 2). Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley proposed a framework to analyze religious rituals from a cognitive science of religion perspective, and I shall show how their framework helps us solve this puzzle. The key to the solution is the observation, informed by Harvey Whitehouse’s modes of religiosity, that both early splinter-group leaders and aggadic midrashim belong to the ‘imagistic mode’ in Judaism, whereas the ‘doctrinal mode’ is represented by the ‘theologically correct’ rabbinic halakhic system. The first results of an on-going project at the University of Amsterdam on “The Jewish Mind: Jewish rituals and the cognitive science of religion” will be presented.

John 18:28 is well-known as a text that demonstrates Jesus' crucifixion on Nisan 14, the day leading up to the eating of the Passover lamb on the evening of that same day. Unlike most studies in which "pascha" is understood as referring exclusively to the Passover lamb, and in distinction from a smaller group of studies in which the term is understood as referring to the festival offerings of Passover week (cf. 2 Chron 35:7-9), the current study will demonstrate that the term is the result of irony and double-entendre, devices that the author of the Fourth Gospel (hereafter FG) employs elsewhere in the narrative of FG for the purpose of implicit commentary.

The lecture will propose a new approach to the origin of Israel's forefathers in northeastern Syria. First, the term Šubarû/Šubartu served in the 14th-13th centuries B.C.E as a general ethnic designation for Hurrians, and as a more specific reference to the kingdom of Hanigalbat (Mitanni). Yet, in one of the letters exchanged between Ramesses II and Hattušili III, Šubarû refers to a territory in western Syria, between Aleppo and Qadesh. Second, it appears that the king of Zulapa played a prominent role in the international politics of the mid-13th century B.C.E. Zulapa is identified with modern Salba, ca. 35 km northwest of Hama, but is not known as a center of any important polity except for a period ca. 1260-1240 B.C.E., and it is unclear how it gained political prominence in that period. Third, the Bible presents Israel's forefathers as originating from the area of Harran and the Khabur triangle, but no migration from those areas to Palestine is attested in the second millennium B.C.E. The lecture will propose that after the conquest of Hanigalbat by Shalmaneser I, its king Šattuara II escaped to the west and was enthroned by Hattušili III in Zulapa, which was then named "kingdom of Šubarû." I will also propose that some elements of the population which migrated with Šattuara II to Zulapa moved later to Palestine, as part of a larger southward migration from the Hittite lands after 1200 B.C.E (possible evidence for that wave of migration has been pointed out by several scholars).

Biblical references to spinning and weaving and to textiles in general are rather few. The lack of textiles in the archaeological finds, due to climatic conditions, has its influence on reconstructions and models. Not only theoretical models show the lack of a ‘ textile factor’ but also popular reconstructions of for instance the Iron Age house, the so-called four room Israelite house do hardly show any cloth items. The use of textiles is a fundamental human necessity, adding color and warmth to the lives of people, and according to Braudel ‘the production of textile in fact implied the organization of the whole economy and society ‘(Braudel 2002:73). In Jordan textile remains and artifacts used to produce textiles have been excavated recently, these finds from three different places in Jordan, will be compared to earlier finds from Israel and Jordan. The study of archaeological finds associated with textile production enables us to come nearer to the physical world of the biblical narrative.

The Islamic notion of tahrif or 'falsification' is often understood as meaning that Jews (and Christians) altered their own sacred scriptures brought to them by God, turning away from His message. The study of this question – whether the Qur'anic text really states this or actually means something else – is usually limited to a debate over the vocabulary and syntax of the four verses employing the verb harrafa (Q2:75; Q4:46; Q5:13, 41 – the verbal noun tahrif not even being used in the Qur'an). For instance, it has been argued that this verb means 'to change the meaning' of the words and would then only describe scriptural exegesis and not a rewriting or physical alteration of the text (Dictionnaire du Coran, Paris 2007). In this paper I propose to visit once again the sensitive question of tahrif by exploring the Qur'an's intra-textuality. A study of the interaction among the vocabulary used in the whole text and of the whole Qur'anic argument concerning scripture (previous scriptures as well as itself) enables the unearthing of a more complex set of visions: 1) A specific representation of the 'Torah' (tawrat) and the 'Gospel' (injil); 2) A link between the accusations of 'alteration' and those of 'forgery' and 'lie'; 3) An implicit consequence of the presentation of the relationship between the Qur'an and previous scriptures. Out of a detailed analysis of these three elements and their interplay, the Qur'anic definition of tahrif becomes more precise. Furthermore, the logic under which this notion has appeared in the text is identified by addressing its diachronic development.

In Romans 5:12-21, Paul gives an historical account of sin in various phases. He describes its lethal effect. Casting Adam as a type of Christ, Paul portrays the free gift through Christ as the invigorating alternative. While, juxtaposing Adam and Christ, sin and righteousness, death and eternal life, nomistic terms play an essential role throughout the argument of this pericope. Further, some transitions may be classified as awkward. In short, this may point to the usage of sources, particularly Jewish sources. Through source criticism, this paper aims to uncover Paul’s employment of such sources. Beyond source criticism, this paper discusses how Paul operated as an exegete. This consequently impinges upon the question of Paul’s intent. Fields like “the OT in the NT” show that the question of Paul’s use of sources receives ample attention today. Next to the OT, the pan-Mediterranean basin of Jewish traditions forms another candidate that Paul the Jewish exegete could have employed as source for his exegesis. This study selects the various Jewish traditions that can be supposed to be at Paul’s disposal. It further weighs which tradition(s) likely served as sources for the text in Romans 5:12-21. It will argue that not only biblical but more so extra-biblical tradition played a vital role in Paul’s formulation. After a reasonable reconstruction of Paul’s sources, the paper scrutinizes Paul as an exegetical craftsman. It will propose a hypothesis as to how Paul constructed the passage in Romans 5:12-21.

The title character of the book of Ruth has been viewed historically as everything from the paragon of a proselyte to a marginal figure who is ultimately nothing more than a pawn used by Naomi and, more lasciviously, by Boaz to attain their own ends. The Targum of Ruth works within the limits of its genre, rendering the text into Aramaic while subtly transforming the character of Ruth through the addition of bits of information and dialogue. This paper will examine how the Targumist has transformed the character of Ruth, providing her with a lineage of her own, a dramatic confirmation of conversion, and making her a rabbinic exemplar.

Many biblical scholars assume that reception history constitutes a field of inquiry separate from biblical criticism itself: historical criticism puts the text into its original context, while reception history investigates what happens when biblical texts escape that context. Yet in light of discoveries of textual fluidity throughout the supposed “original” period of biblical composition, the biblical text should be understood as a dynamic process, not a static product. As such, there is no clear delineation between the original context and later contexts, and thus no clear delineation between biblical criticism and reception history. Instead of participating in the textual critic’s quest for the original text or the historical critic’s quest for the original context, biblical scholars should aim to map the multiple, irreducible developments of biblical textual forms and meanings throughout history. In my estimation, reception history is not primarily an interpretative practice (i.e., What does this text mean?). Rather, reception history creates a model of a text's capacities by means of repeated textual experimentation throughout history (i.e., What can this text do?). With this approach, one may integrate traditional methods of biblical criticism with reception history. Furthermore, one may organize the overwhelming amount of reception-data into a coherent pattern. I will illustrate this theory with a brief look at the development the capacities of Daniel 7 as they unfold over time.

The Metastructure of Midrash and Piyyut Marc Bregman Abstract SBL 2012 International Meeting July 22-26, Amsterdam Early Judaism and Rabbinics (EABS) The Tanhuma-Yelammedenu midrashim viewed as a cohesive literary genre, preserve a cycle of homilies for the entire cycle of pentateuchal lections. Early Piyyut especially that represented by Yannai and other Payyetanim preserves a similar cycle of liturgical poems on the pentateuchal lections. There are a number of other similarities between these two genres of literature, one prose and the other poetry, some of which have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. These similarities are further reflected in the evolution of early Christian biblical exegesis in prose and poetry. My presentation will explore this complex of interrelationships in order to delineate the metastructure of biblical interpretation, as it evolved in these two biblically based religions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

A mother figure (Naomi) and a daughter figure (Ruth) are posited in the center of the Ruth Scroll. Another daughter figure (to Naomi, Orpah) appears briefly, also serving as a sister figure (To Ruth). This female family sees itself as deficient and eventually sets out to fulfill the deficiency. Is the lack fulfilled by acquiring male family members (Boaz and the newborn son), or is there something else at stake? Is ?esed and loyalty, or religious sentiment, the lack sought and found, to constitute a happy end for the female figures? Or will a new analysis of the sisterly (brotherly) kin groups, Moab and Judah (Israel), yield other results?

This essay offers an alternative reading of the enigmatic encounter between Yael the Kenite and Sisera, the army commander of Yabin king of Hazor, that is described in the book of Judges in two versions: prose (4:17-22) and poetry (5:24-27). I argue that various aspects, details, and patterns in the texts, although reworked and edited, embed traces of elements generally characteristic of and associated with cultic practices of magic and divination. The setting, atmosphere, imagery, and dialogues point to a different picture than the one generally interpreted: not of a chance encounter between a defeated general looking for shelter and a woman in front of her tent, but of a military leader seeking an audience with a designated [female] cultic intermediary/diviner so that he can learn about his future fate. The proposed interpretation will be compared to two other biblical stories that, according to my reading, belong to the same literary genre, both taking place in times of war and communal distress. The first is the encounter between King Saul, the medium of En-dor and Samuel’s spirit, on the eve of Saul’s final battle with the Philistines (1 Sam. 28:5-25). In the second story, Balak king of Moab enlists the services of the prophet-diviner Balaam during the Israelites’ sojourn in the wilderness and (Numbers 22-24). These two encounter stories share themes of prophecy and divination, and the military leaders cited seek advice from cultic intermediaries/diviners. I suggest a similar reading, from a cultic perspective, of the Yael-Sisera encounter story.

It has been widely supposed that the sectarian movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, part of which eventually established itself at Qumran, was dependent on earlier apocalyptic groups for much of its parenthood. This paper will consider the non-scriptural wisdom compositions found in the Qumran caves, many of which seem to belong to the late third century BCE or early second century BCE, and argue that those responsible for producing such texts are likely to have had a part in the formation of the movement. Indeed, if the founding Teacher was active in the middle of the second century BCE, then traditions associated with him indicate a significant place for those matters commonly identified as part of wisdom literature, from mantological exegesis to reflective poetry.

The first two chapters of Hebrews deal with the mystery of Christ using the method of comparision (synkrisis). The situation of the glorified Christ is compared with the position and function of the angels. The whole section serves as an introduction into the explanation of the Christ's salvation from the cultic and priestly point of view, which is unique among the New Testament writings. The argumentation of the author of Hebrews is comprehensible against the background of the different concepts of human and angelic priesthood as they are witnessed by the sources of the Second Temple literature. The aim of the present paper is to focus on the function of the first two chapters of Hebrews as an introduction to its main theological theme and to highlight the singularity of the Christian concept of priesthood.

This presentation will focus on the reception history of three biblical texts (Genesis 18, Isaiah 6, and Habakkuk 3) that played a crucial role in the articulation of trinitarian theology. A survey the history of interpretation shows that in all three cases, the christological interpretation current in earlier centuries was eventually superseded by a trinitarian one in doctrinal and exegetical writings, while hymnography and iconography continued to prefer the earlier strand of interpretation. I argue that the current scholarly concepts fails to distinguish properly between the type of exegesis involved in each of these cases, and that this failure is especially obvious in the case of the earliest and most enduring Christian exegesis of Old Testament theophanies.

Scholarship has long recognized the peculiar use of Scripture in Hebrews. This paper addresses the existing scholarship on this issue in two ways. First, it questions whether “Scripture” is even a proper analytical category when it comes to Hebrews; the epistle does not seem to have any concept resembling the later notions of “canon” and “canonicity,” and conceives its reference texts as open. Second, this paper looks closely at Hebrews’ interpretive assumptions and devices, particularly as evident from chapters 1-2. These assumptions and practices have been commonly linked to the Alexandrian exegetical tradition. This paper disputes the usefulness of this association and advances the thesis that the author has a complex and inventive approach to his sources and uses interpretive devices that range from situational analogies relying on protasis-apodosis deductions (e.g., the use of “I will trust in him” in 2:13) to extended semantic connections (e.g., between proskunesatosan and leitourgous in 1:6 and respectively 1:7). These inventive interpretive devices rather mirror the later Mishnaic practices of interpretation.

This paper will deal with Sethian Gnostic Christology, which affirmed the (re)-incarnation of the cosmic Seth before (and beyond!) his appearance as Jesus of Nazareth. The paper will highlight the continuity of this Christology as found in the Egyptian Gospel with more oblique references to descending Sethian saviors in the Apocalypse of Adam, Zostrianos, Allogenes, and Marsanes. The contribution of this approach is twofold: stressing the hitherto neglected Christian background of even the “Platonizing” Sethian literature, and differentiating Sethian soteriology from the “descending Pronoia” schema we see in the long recension of the Apocryphon of John and the Trimorphic Protennoia, which must originate outside of Sethianism. Meanwhile, the background of Sethian Christology likely belongs to the reincarnated saviors of “Jewish-Christianity”—the Elchasaites, Ebionites, and author(s) of the Pseudo-Clementine literature—inviting speculation about the origins of Sethianism in the Levant and the transmission of Sethian literature to Rome (and Plotinus) via Elchasaite missionaries.

The Assyrian war horses were carefully groomed and caparisoned for battle, as well as for ceremonial display. Every part of their regalia, from their braided tails to the protective eye bonnets, served a specific purpose that enhanced their comfort and played an important role in the ultimate safety of the warrior or king. This paper investigates the preparation and costuming of the war horse by using illustrations from the Assyrian reliefs and horse figurines found in Iron Age Israel and Cyprus. It discusses visual clues available from the Iron Age on the battle readiness of the horse. Details about the specific uses of various accoutrements are also analyzed.

In recent years scholars have dated an increasing number of biblical texts to the Persian period based on a variety of internal considerations of relative dating and concepts of ways biblical texts might address dynamics thought to be operative during that time. This paper builds on my recent book, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York: Oxford, 2011), to consider whether and how one might make finer distinctions between different parts of the Persian period. In addition, it will consider issues of periodization, the extent to which datings at the outset of the Persian period shade into the Neo-Babylonian period and datings at the end shade into the early Hellenistic Period.

In his Novum Testamentum Graecum 1751-1752, Johann Jakob Wettstein reprints the received text, yet indicating very clearly his proposed omissions, additions, and substitutions. Are there patterns to be discerned in Wettstein’s decision in favour of certain variant readings? And does he somehow motivate his choices? Through a systematic analysis of Wettstein’s changes to the received text, some answers to these questions will be provided.

Not just ‘the works’, James reveals his great concerns about the ‘word'. For him, the prime characteristic of the 'perfect man' is one’s ability to control his tongue/words(3:1; 1:1-4). He presents the Fall(Gen 3) from the vantage point of the failure to control the tongue/words(3:1-12). The kind of faith which fails is nothing other than the faith ‘with only words’(2:14-26). James also raises a harsh voice against the members’ judging and boasting over one another with evil words(2:1-4; 3:14; 4:11-16). Concluding his epistle, he gives warnings against boasting, and even against ‘making a vow’(5:11) which seems not to fit in its literary context. Further, James’ emphasis on words corresponds to his characteristic descriptions of the birth of God’s people; ‘the Father God willed to give birth to them by 'the word of truth'(1:18). Thus his people bear the ‘DNA’ of ‘the implanted word’(1:21) in their hearts. If verses 18-21 indicate the rebirth, it becomes more interesting as to why James depicts the new converts not in terms of the Spirit (as in Paul) but of the Word. Likewise James’ concerns about the words, either human or divine, also express themselves in his dealing with ‘the law’ in chapter 2 and ‘the wisdom’ in its essence in 3:13-14 and its practices in 4:1-5:6. Suggesting fresh answers to the critical issues such as the background of ‘the implanted word’(1:21; cf. 1Pet 1:23; Isa 40:7-8, Jer 31:33), James’ use of the story of creation(3:1-12) and the rationale for the literary context of the ‘vow’ saying in 5:11, this article aims to lay an emerging new foundation of James' theology of the words, not just works, according to the themes of the salvation, sanctification, the fall, the recreation, and the eschaton as unfolded in the epistle.*

The overarching purpose of the paper is to examine the architecture of early Christian emotions in the form of apocalyptic expressions. Special research attention will be paid to fear, sadness, anger, disgust and happiness, which are articulated in the Apocalypse of John. SPAARS (Schematic, Propositional, Analogical and Associative Representational Systems), an integrated model of emotion, is adopted to explain how early Christians consciously experienced the social world through their bodily dynamics and surroundings. Building on the pioneering research insights of Mick Power and Tim Dalgleish, this study aims at evaluating the applicability of their SPAARS model on the ancient apocalyptic literature and its corresponding human consciousness in antiquity. The Apocalypse of John is evocative by nature. Could the evocative verbalization of the Apocalypse be explained by the SPAARS model? “Within SPAARS there are two routes to the generation of emotion: the paradigmatic schematic route and an associatively driven route” (POWER & DALGLEISH 2008). The first part of the paper tries to identify and categorize emotions generated in the Apocalypse via either route of the SPAARS system. Besides, in SPAARS, “emotions are primarily appraisal based …; thus within SPAARS, emotions are explicitly functional” (ibid.). Emotions, a fundamental manifestation of embodiment of human consciousness, play a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition (Michelle MAIESE 2011). The second part attempts to analyze separate domains of mind-content involving the self, the social world, and the others behind the biblical text. Furthermore, the basic architecture of SPAARS is a multi-level framework and has much in common with other multi-representational approaches to emotions, in particular MEMs (e.g., JOHNSON & MULTHAUP 1992) and ICS (e.g., TEASDALE & BARNARD 1993). The last but most prominent part of the paper evaluates similarities and dissimilarities between SPAARS and apocalyptic mind.

The paper will aim to demonstrate that the author of the story of Ruth engages the Pentateuch in hermeneutical fashion, synthesizing disparate and contradictory texts on the legal concepts, laws, and institutions of land redemption, levirate marriage, inheritance, the perpetuation of name. The paper will argue that the oracular novella of the daughters of Zelophad in Num 27:1-11 served the author as the linchpin for the synthesis he produced. To help characterize the author's method, the paper will compare it with the discourse of exegesis in Chr-Ezra-Neh, discuss the relationship between the exegesis of the Pentateuch and the message of the story, and reflect on the character of the combination of law and narrative.

The sea in biblical scholarship is often considered a mythological or a fantastical space. This is so for good reason. God subdued the sea at creation and continues to exercise mastery over it so that it does not threaten life on dry land. It is also the site of God’s miraculous deliverance on Israel’s route out of Egypt. However, the sea was an ordinary, everyday space for at least a small portion of the ancient Israelite population, the seamen. Israel’s access to the Mediterranean Sea was blocked by the Philistines and the Phoenicians to the west and her access to the Red Sea by the Edomites to the south. However, R. Stieglitz, building on the work of S. Yeivin, argues that, from the time of David, Israel and Judah had intermittent access to the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea and nurtured a robust maritime ambition throughout the monarchic period. This is no where more evident then in Psalm 107. This paper studies the sacred and mythological aspect of ancient Israelite conception of the geographic sea in Psalm 107 as a window on the way they may have conceived of all space as geographical, mythological, and sacred.

Popular worship of goddesses such as Astarte and Tanit occurred at grottos (caves) on Mediterranean coasts. On the Sicilian coast near Palermo, the sacred site of Grotta Regina was in use at least from the 4th-5th fourth century B.C.E. Regina’s wall art is rare among Phoenician-Punic tombs of Sicily. Among its numerous inscriptions one finds dedications to Semitic deities, religious symbols including a sign meaning “of Tanit,” and sea vessels depicted in sacred settings. The latter is a familiar theme for seafarers and warriors expressing the desire to dedicate ships to a deity. Grotto art displays popular characteristics. Paper considers whether religious personnel officiated at these small, out of the way sanctuaries and whether the Phoenician-Punic evidence informs the research of wayside sanctuaries and conventicles in Israel.

This paper focuses on the concept of sterility as idealized in the Biblical text and exemplified in the stories of Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel and Jacob. My analysis of these stories leads to the hypothesis that sterility is one of the foundational themes of Israel's ancient past, by condensing some of the main obstacles inherent to the emergency of a people who believe to be guided by God. This new perspective on sterility was achieved by focusing on the spectrum of meanings of the Hebrew root 'qr, which includes infertility and uprooting; these, added to famine in the land, are experiences that will shape the religious conscience of Israel. This approach amplifies the perception of sterility in the Hebrew Bible, as it emerges from the text as a liminal state of deprivation , in opposition to the contents of the divine oath to the patriarchs (progeny and land). But even while enclosing lack of productivity, weakness and death, which have a negative value, Biblical sterility is not a closed circle, but a space open to potentiality, where divine revelation occurs. God reveals himself through sterility and in sterility. The originality and the notion of specificity in the biblical idea of sterility lie in this cyclical trait, which breaks the circumscription and negative orientation of sterility. The Bible presents sterility as a transitory state, an area for individual and corporate transformation of status. In an ideological system, such as ancient Israel's, where contractual relations replace natural relations, sterility functions as a powerful symbol of the relationship among men and between men and God. And this may be the reason why sterile matriarch's traditions were continually re-interpreted, from the 10th century BCE. until the 1st century CE, and could be adapted to new contexts and make sense to distinct communities…

Nicetas of Heraclea (born c. 1060) was a metropolitan, a teacher, and a prolific author of both secular and theological works, including several biblical catenae. Though some of his works have received numerous treatments, his catena on John's Gospel has received little scholarly attention of any kind, remaining today unedited and unpublished. Of primary concern here is that not even the question of what manuscripts contain this work has been satisfactorily answered. One finds conflicting reports from Caspar René Gregory, Hermann Freiherr von Soden, and Joseph Reuss, who unanimously agree on only three out of ten total witnesses proposed between them (Gregory-Aland 249, 317, 333, 423, 430, 743, 841, 869, 886, and 1178). The present paper addresses this issue by examining these ten manuscripts to determine which actually contain Nicetas's catena on John. Due to the length of the catena (approximately 300,000 words) and the number of witnesses involved, a practical and economical method of comparing these manuscripts is necessary. First, the number of words in each manuscript was estimated and compared with the best known witnesses of the catena (based on age and agreement between Gregory, von Soden, and Reuss). Second, test passages were examined to see which witnesses contain the same lemmata and commentary at the same point in the text. The results show that seven of the ten manuscripts contain Nicetas's catena of John, though not all in the same form.

Job’s grievance has not been about suffering but about injustice. Yet injustice is the one topic Yahweh will not address in his speeches, effectively ruling it out of order. He does not bully Job but delightedly expounds his vision for the universe. This response does not satisfy Job, who feels his whole case is ignored. His reply to Yahweh (42:2-6) is more subtle than it appears: in the guise of a concession of defeat he keeps open his charge of injustice against God. He says three things: (1) “I know that you can do anything” (42:2). This apparently bland statement has a sharp edge: I now recognize that no other consideration weighs with you except power. (2) “I have spoken things too wonderful for me” (42:3). Justice is not a straightforward matter, he now recognizes: it is “wonderful”, a “marvel” beyond comprehension. It is not a principle to which Yahweh is subject, nor a value superior to Yahweh; it is no more than another sphere of divine might. (3) “So I submit, and I accept consolation for my dust and ashes” (42:6). He does not “reject” something (ma’as), for no object is expressed, but rather “melts” or “submits” (masas), i.e. he admits that he has lost his lawsuit, since its outcome has been determined by divine power. But he has not lost his argument, which was about justice. Now he will accept consolation, that is, he will cease his mourning for his dead children. He means: it is only the mourning, and not the grievance, that is coming to an end.

Under the label «Digital Humanities» are gathered now more than 114 centers in 24 countries. Various goups, list, websites allow scholars to exchange and develop knowledge in a new way, such as the Digital Medievalist discussion list, or the Digital Classicist Discussion list (see www.flickr.com/photos/ucldh/6730021199/sizes/o/in/photostream/). New Testament textual criticism is a good example to analyze and think about the tranformation of Academic networks, with the examples of the blog «Evangelical Textual Criticism» (http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/) and the textual criticism discussion group on Yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/). The paper will analyze in which ways such internet networks are influencing and fashionning research in this field. It will also consider the influence of these networks on the Greek New Testament edition itself.

Sometimes a Christian text and a rabbinic text are antipodal one to the other. One is North to the other’s South, Up to the other’s Down, Yin to the other’s Yang. This article concerns one such pair: Mark 7:1-23 and Bavli Eruvin 21b-22a. The gospel of Mark is usually dated around 70 CE; B. Eruvin 21b-22a is a cento of statements attributed to Babylonian amoraim of the early and mid fourth century CE and edited decades, perhaps centuries, later. Did the editor of B. Eruvin 21b-22a know, or know of, Mark 7? Since there is no convincing evidence that he did, I would prefer to retreat into the notion of antipodality and to focus instead on the rival truth claims of these texts. The question addressed by the two passages is the same: do humans have the authority to supplement the divine revelation contained in scripture? Mark says no, B. Eruvin says yes. In Mark the Pharisees and scribes uphold “the tradition of the elders”; B. Eruvin celebrates “the words of the sages” and “the words of the scribes.” In Mark Jesus mocks the Pharisees and scribes because, he says, their tradition sets aside the word of God. In Eruvin anyone who mocks the words of the scribes is threatened with dire punishment in the afterworld, because violating the words of the scribes is an even more severe offense than violating the words of the Torah. Both Mark and B. Eruvin adduce scriptural prooftexts to support their positions, and both Mark and B. Eruvin see the washing of hands before eating as the primary example of this human supplementation of the Torah. The arguments of the two passages are diametrically opposed one to the other; the texts are antipodal.

The apocryphal book of Tobit is frustratingly ambiguous when it comes to describing the principal antagonist, the demon Asmodeus. Not only is the text less than clear about his exact motives for tormenting Sarah, but equally reticent in terms of detailing the demon’s physical appearance. As a result, the Asmodeus of reception history has assumed a myriad of bodily forms, with later interpreters and narrators employing a combination of tenuous intertextual connections and copious creativity in their reimaginings of the character. Nevertheless, interpretations tend to fall into one of a limited number of “types.” This paper will provide a brief survey of these different readings of the corporeal nature of Asmodeus, arguing that it is the very ambiguity of the apocryphal text in this respect which has resulted in the diversity of conceptions regarding both his bodily form and, accordingly, the nature of the character.

The paper will focus on the depiction of Jael and Sisera in Dutch art ranging from the 16th century woodcuts of Lucas van Leyden and engravings of Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert to the 21st century print-making of Marcelle Hanselaar. At issue will be the gendered constructions of Jael and Sisera, and what these representations suggest about readings of the biblical Jael. Of particular interest in the Renaissance period is the figurative use of Jael both in the popular topos known as the Power of Women (Weibermacht), and in several different series depicting exemplary women from the Bible. The Power of Women topos was directed to a male audience, warning them about the seductive dangers of women. Meanwhile, the exemplars were often designed for a female audience, putting on display the virtues that elite women should attain. The paper will examine how the intended audience altered the assessment of Jael and the artistic representations of her gender identity. Meanwhile, what happens to Sisera? Is he the feminized victim of the masculinized Jael? Is he the strong male warrior who, even so, is overcome by a woman? Or, is he absent altogether, represented only by implication in Jael’s attributes—the mallet and peg? The answer is all of the above. The paper will conclude with a gender-critical exploration of a 21st century Jael--Hanselaar’s Rembrandt- inspired, highheeled Jael, who is, according to the artist, “just doing what a girl’s got to do.”

Rahab is probably the most surprising and interesting person on the hero list. She is the ninth individual commended by name but utterly different from the rest. She is a woman, a gentile, and identified as "the prostitute." Most intriguingly, rhetorical markers indicate that the hero list was designed to culminate with her example. This paper will explore the function of the example of Rahab for the message and purpose of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

‘Everything has changed!’ says a social historian, and at once many people think in terms of computers. A modern Deborah would think in terms of men and women. Not so long ago, fictional men like Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Hercule Poirot were commanding figures who gave orders. Nowadays fictional men like Charlie Crews and Robbie Lewis take orders from a frozen-faced know-it-all dominatrix who fifty years ago would have been a sarcastic teacher in a primary school, blinking with mad deliberate slowness while she rebuked her little pupils in a sing-song voice. Of course the change in the world of fictional detectives merely mirrors what has happened in the real world. Thus the august all-boys school which I attended during the 1960s recently appointed a lady principal. The very idea would have seemed ludicrous in the days of JFK and LBJ. 'Stop getting on like Statler and Waldorf,' says the social historian. 'Talk about computers!' All right. Computers have helped to change the face of Western maleness. In my country many boys now sit indoors, take no exercise whatever, and become grossly obese. Renouncing what Deborah called ‘the workmen’s hammer’, they content themselves with a mobile phone and a comb. Quite a few of them allow their palsied nerdishness to develop at the keyboard into nihilistic morbidity and malevolence. I often wonder how useful these pallid anchorites would be if my country ever found it necessary to introduce conscription. The very sight of them makes me angry. I reckon that it would have made Deborah angry as well. Deborah bore a name which meant BEE, and which therefore connoted a society dominated by females, but she herself had no desire to be a dominatrix. She wanted men to be men. When she joined with Barak to sing the song which is recorded in Judges 5, Deborah’s main theme was THE DEFEAT OF UNMANLINESS. The two principal belligerents of Judges 4 were notably lacking in manhood, and so was the only important neutral. Listen to what Barak said, in effect. ‘All right, Deborah, I accept the position of commander in chief -- on the condition that you come with me, and hold my hand.’ Then imagine what Heber the Kenite must have said. ‘Jael, dear, there’s going to be a terrible battle today, and there may be some dangerous hoodlums running around afterwards, so be careful. I have to off now for a picnic. You’ll probably be all right.’ Finally, listen to Sisera’s mother. ‘Each of our lads will be taking a beautiful Israelite girl or two as a prize, but we all know that Sisera doesn’t go for that sort of thing. He’ll be gathering up colourful pieces of embroidery.’ Aside from its main theme, the Song of Deborah is a work of amazing sophistication. It is characterized by a delight in opulent language, by a magisterial sense of history, and by a strong sense of the cosmic dimension. No literate person will describe it as primitive. What does the Song tell us about its author, about the influence of the stars, about the quality of Israelite textiles, and about Canaanite technology? When Deborah talked about Barak leading his own captivity captive, was she encouraging him to have done with his personal unmanliness? Were the lofty theoreticians who rode on white asses nothing more than delicate and unwarlike exquisites? Was the tribe of Zebulun a notable producer of scribes and scriveners? We shall address these and other questions in Amsterdam.

This paper reviews the current state of evoutionary theory and examines the possiblities of using it as an integrative model in biblical studies. Particular attention will be paid to the interaction of four inheritance systems (genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic), arguing for an extension of the "dual inheritance" model and approaching religion as a complex phenomenon that involves all four dimensions of evolution. The final part of the paper will focus on the thesis that religion has become a tool of self-domestication in humans.

The Matthean figure of Peter has been a subject of much discussion, but it seems to have been unexplored that the author of Matthew actually omits the Markan inside view of Peter. As several scholars have argued, the Markan inside view is crucial for the audience’s identification with Peter. Because the narrator conveys information about Peter’s thoughts and feelings, the audience does not dissociate itself from Peter, but begins to feel sympathy for the character. In the gospel of Matthew, by contrast, the figure of Peter is much more alienated, since the narrator reduces the inside view. I will argue that we may find two levels in Matthew’s portrait of the figure of Peter: the figure not only plays a role in Matthew’s narrative, it also reflects Matthew’s response to the gospel of Mark. I will hypothetically suggest that the omission of the Markan inside view of Peter indicates that the gospel of Mark was already connected to the authority of Peter (the tradition known from Papias of Hierapolis) when the gospel of Matthew was written, and that the author of Matthew wanted to supersede the gospel of Mark and therefore sought to disqualify this tradition by omitting the references to the memory and thoughts of Peter.

Although interpretations of naked female images abound, they are usually informed by modern assumptions rather than the ancient contexts of the images in question. Associating naked females with women and fertility, scholars then proceed to either justify this association through limited ancient textual sources or draw conclusions based upon the purported inextricable link between the depictions of female bodies and concerns scholars assume would be central to females. In actuality, when the context and form of the naked female trope is examined, little can be found to undergird this interpretation. Rather, the combined data, particularly from the Late Bronze and Iron II, suggest that the overriding concern is protection and healing, issues certainly not unique to females. In order to demonstrate the problematic nature of current interpretations, particularly in regard to Judean Pillar Figurines, this paper first describes a number of ancient female images that resist the “female fertility” theory and then argues that the disseminations, forms, and contexts of naked female images reflect intentional ambiguity on the part of artisan communities and, if anything, an association between the naked female, protection, and healing.

The narrative thought form is person and value oriented and as such represents a fundamental anthropomorphism. Biblical religion is narrative in this sense, and the understanding of God, the World, and Humankind is formed by language dominated by the use of binary categories such as God vs. Mankind; God vs. Satan; Good vs. Evil. Religions seem to struggle to overcome and transcend the different dichotomies, either by postulating a possible position beyond values where differences have lost their meaning (the negative way) or by postulating a radical split with two clean positions, an evil one and a good one, eventually to be overcome by some sort of apocatastasis (universal salvation from Evil). A closer look at temptation in Gen 3 and Mark may give us an opportunity to detect and reveal some of the basic problems in Biblical narrative thinking, especially how the God vs. Satan is related to the God vs. Mankind, and in what sense the dualism between Good and Evil is of a relative kind seeing Evil as the privative mode of Good

In the Pseudepigraphal work the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs the mind of an individual plays a large role. In general, it is the mind that is the focus of the exhortation, with regards to ethics and salvation. T12P is structured around the understanding of a human spirit, the mind, which stands between good and evil spirits. The evil spirits influence a person’s mind, causing him to think unrighteous thoughts and ultimately commit unrighteous acts. The role of the mind, however, is so large that it even plays a dominant role in the physical appearance of a person. \n\n In this paper we will examine three distinct cases of the internal spirit of a person causing monstrous bodies. In the first case, women bear giants due to their mental lust for the angelic Watchers. Secondly, we note that specific parts of the body are associated with specific vice-related spirits. When a person’s mind follows the temptings of such a spirit, he will become disabled in that specific part of his body. Thirdly, an evil spirit has the power to poison a person’s own spirit. This causes all manner of physical discomfort to a person, ultimately leading a poisoned person to manifest himself in a monstrous way. These three cases show the close relationship between one’s external appearance, and one’s internal demeanor. Mankind can function as a means through which the invisible monstrous manifests itself in the visible world. As far as T12P are concerned, a monstrous body is caused by a monstrous mind, which in turn is caused by the evil spirits, i.e. the very essence of the monstrous. This leads to several conclusions regarding mankind’s natural and monstrous states, how one can influence how one manifests in the physical world, and the nature of the monstrous in early Christianity.

This paper gives an introduction to the Dutch translation project ‘the Bible in Plain Language’, as currently carried out by the Netherlands Bible Society. The paper deals with the targets of this translation, the demands that are put to the renderings in order to fulfill the translation criteria, and the strategies used to meet these demands. The focus will be on the criterion of clarity, which requires that all renderings are clear with regard to vocabulary, grammar, style, construction, presentation, and content. In order to meet this criterion, an important strategy is the use of ‘clarifying renderings’. This means that the implied meaning is put forward in a more explicit and lucid way than in conventional (more literal) renderings. Especially for idioms, concepts and metaphors at home and well understood in the ancient world but unfamiliar to today’s readers, it is necessary to produce clarifying renderings. The paper will present a range of examples showing how we proceed, some do’s and don’t, and the limits of clarification in translation.

This contribution investigates the relation between spatiality and bodiliness in the Book of Job from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. The latter provides several tools that are valuable for exegesis. In the book, body and space coincide as Job describes the hardship he suffers. The Job of the prologue has a land with a border (1,10). The dialogue's protagonist, however, is lost, his roads are crooked, he is walled up (19,8), and roads are built to attack him (19,12). Not only is his bodily integrity under debate, so is his freedom to move and, as I argue, his right to a place. Space is metaphorically used to describe the tension between God, society and Job. His friends are like wadi in the dessert, that vanish in the heat of the sun (6,15-17). The attacks on Job are centripetal: he is the centre and he has a centre (among many other examples, see 16,9-14). His body becomes the locus of morality: evil can be in his hand (11,14) or his inner being (31,33). Job 20,12-18, for instance, describes how iniquity is food that a person eats and vomits out on God's initiative. With the evil inside of it, the body is destroyed. The latter is a house, but only one of clay (4,19; 10,9). The effects of the neglect of Job's private place result in him becoming a public place (whilst still remaining ironically isolated). His longing for non-existence is elsewhere in the book related to being forgotten by one's place or being in another place (the chthonic, ruins, the house of the dead, etc.). This delocalisation is explicit as "his place will no longer know him (7,10; 8,18; 20,9; etc.)." Death is a place without a space. These semiotic and cognitive categories cause personal deixis to turn into place deixis.

To a considerable extent the modern Dutch translations consulted appear to honour the paragraph divisions of the Codex Leningradensis (CL). There appears to be a quasi-total agreement with regard to section markings before 4:1; 4:6; 5:6; 6:1. A considerable number of Dutch versions also agree with regard to 4:8; 4:11; 5:1; 5:9. Mostly it is unclear if this remarkable agreement was a deliberate choice of the translators which was based on the sectioning of CL or a decision purely based on content. After all, many divisions are perfectly logical from the viewpoint of content. Only one Dutch translation explicitly bases its sectioning on CL. All others deviate in some respects from CL. An inspection of other ancient witnesses suggests that it is unwise to deviate from CL in these chapters. An example will be given of a Dutch version forcing a particular interpretation on the reader by manipulating the layout and inserting suggestive captions.

The paper will discuss Spinoza's contribution to early critical scholarship on the Pentateuch. It will firstly focus on his historical and literary analyses as a significant preparation for contempary critical scholarship, before, in a final part, it will focus on the way in which he developed the outcomes of these analyses in his mystical perspective on the Pentateuch material.

The exegete and philosopher Aristobulus (2nd century BCE, probably Alexandria) combines the Sabbath with knowledge (fragment 5). He links them by the light of the first day of creation and the principle or structure of seven (hebdomos logos). The light stands for wisdom; and the seven structure points to completeness, the order of the world, and the order of time. In my paper I would like to deal with the meaning and implication of physikos and ennomos in fragment 5. In a “natural” manner (physikos) the Sabbath is the first day of creation and by the “noetic” light of the first day the beginning of knowledge. Thus, the Sabbath is ennomos in two senses: Firstly, it has been prescribed in the Torah (the Nomos); secondly, the Sabbath is in accordance with general structures and rhythms in nature; and this presupposes that the Sabbath is by no means a human convention but rather a commandment of natural law. Aristobulus, thus, boldly equates the Jewish Sabbath with universal wisdom and proclaims the Sabbath’ commandment to be universal, that is, valid for a non-Jew (Ptolemy, to whom he dedicates his work) or for non-Jews (that is, Egyptian society) in general.

For more than two centuries, the book of Exodus has been playing a major role in literary-critical theories on the textual growth of the Pentateuch. Moreover, in the wake of the manuscript discoveries near the Dead Sea, the book has also come to take centre stage in text-critical discussions of the Hebrew Bible. Its two alternative textual forms vis-à-vis the Masoretic Text evident in the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch have been recognised as genuine editions that cannot be relegated to the status of a free translation or a sectarian forgery. Moreover, additional editions have been identified in the so-called ‘pre-Samaritan’ or ‘harmonising’ textual tradition, and – according to a steadily increasing number of scholars – in the manuscripts formerly known as 4QReworked Pentateuch. In line with the blurring of the boundaries between textual and literary criticism in post-Qumranic research, Eugene Ulrich has recently sought to connect these five extant editions to the hypothetical stages of the book’s formation reconstructed by literary criticism, which yielded a model envisaging a trajectory of no less than 12 literary editions in his paper The Evolutionary Production and Transmission of the Scriptural Books (2010). Elaborating upon Ulrich’s seminal work, the present paper seeks to further develop and modify this model by singling out four critical points to his approach, paying particular attention to, respectively, (1) the problems of the historicity of the Exodus narrative, (2) the picture of the book’s early textual development; (3) the complexity of relationships between the extant textual witnesses; and (4) the possibility of extending this chain of literary tradition beyond 4Q[Reworked]Pentateuch in other examples of ‘rewritten Scripture’. On the basis of these observations, this paper will attempt to provide an alternative synthesis that fits in with recent developments in the different areas of tradition-historical research.

Job and Ecclesiastes are commonly classed together as “wisdom in revolt,” i.e. as breaking away, with their questioning stance, from the more traditional proverbial wisdom as found in Proverbs. In this paper I will argue that in fact Ecclesiastes is more mainstream, following in the wake of Proverbs, than Job and that on many levels Proverbs and Ecclesiastes form the nucleus of the biblical wisdom corpus.

Current scholarship pays considerable attention to double meaning in the Hebrew bible. It is suggested that the tendency toward choosing one meaning as the solution to the problem of ambiguity does not do justice to the intricate artistry of literary devices such as Janus parallelism. This feature can be found throughout several biblical books, but occurs particularly and frequently in the poetry of Job. Therefore, it is even deemed to be characteristic for the author’s style and the book’s structure. When the LXX translator is confronted with Janus parallelism in the Hebrew text, he is inevitably puzzled with the question of how to render it in Greek. Indeed, lexical polyvalency is almost always lost in translation. Against this backdrop, and within the methodological framework of ‘content-related’ criteriology (Ausloos & Lemmelijn) in characterising the translation technique of Job, the study of Greek renderings of Janus parallelism seems to be a relevant indication. How did the translator handle the ambiguity of the wordplay and the parallelisms created thereby? Against the background of Noegel’s presentation and initial discussion of the textual material and the Greek rendering thereof, the present paper aims at nuancing and complementing his approach specifically from the perspective of content-related criteriology. To this end, Janus parallelism will be (re-)defined and its value as a content-related criterion will be assessed (I). Thereafter, some examples of LXX Job will be discussed (II), so as to evaluate whether the translator was ‘faithful’ to the (double) meaning and what kind of creativity he demonstrated. By studying creative renderings – showing that Hebrew wordplay does exist, has possibly been noticed and even rendered in LXX –, the present paper can offer valuable arguments pro the factual existence of this literary feature and is simultaneously an exploration of the possibilities of using Greek literary figures in translation.

The ‘city’ has always fascinated biblical scholars as a theme, motif and locus. Increasingly, as we witness an exponential growth in urban development and habitation, this preoccupies much critical discourse in various other fields too. As is to be expected a parallel impulse has seen an explosion of so-called ‘Street Art.’ “Places are my essential material,” says Ernest Pignon-Ernest. The ‘street’ is both the setting and the subject of the ephemeral works of this French artist. The backdrop and texture of the urban environment and the natural weathering of the elements both contextualise and participate in the texturing of his exquisite Caravaggesque drawings. These artworks erected in the city precinct begin to disintegrate almost immediately as they are put up. The ‘city’ becomes a co-creator in the artwork that continues to evolve as long as the vaguest shard of paper clings to cement. This paper considers most specifically Pignon-Ernest’s work, based on Jean Genet’s play “Querelle”, sited at the Port of Brest and some possible interpretations. The series has obvious allusions to the passion narratives - here conceived in a modern idiom. Moreover, its transient form not only radically challenges conceptions of what makes art valuable and therefore important, but its very ‘texture’ also throws up some intriguing parallels for scholars of biblical texts.

In the 4th century CE, Eusebius of Caesarea noted parallels between Moses and Jesus in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Demonstratio Evangelica 3.2). Other, more modern scholars have explained these comparisons using the methodology of typology, most notably Dale C. Allison (The New Moses, 1993) and Leonard Goppelt (Typos, 1982 [1939]). Allison argues that Jesus is the antitype of Moses and thus his fulfilment (244), while Goppelt contends that Jesus’ first person address of “but I say to you” in the antitheses of Matthew (5.21-48) portrays his divine authority and thus his dominance over the figure of Moses (67). This presentation seeks to challenge the often accepted understanding of Mosaic typology through an exploration of the biblical use of the terms “type” and “antitype.” I contend that an antitype does not fulfil its type, instead these terms are synonymous. Therefore, while the methodology of typology can, I believe, be applied to the figures of Moses and Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, this constructed relationship does not depict Jesus as superior to Moses, but instead, as a figure like Moses. One of the ways in which this conclusion can be reached is through a study of Jesus’ first person address in the antitheses. This manner of speech identifies Jesus as the “prophet like Moses” of Deut 18.15-9, the one who will speak the words of God (Deut 18.18) similar to Moses’ first person address to the Hebrews in passages such as Deut 11.13-5 and 31.23-4.

Who is the Son of Man in Lk 4 / Mt 4 who is tempted by the Devil? This paper will support the thesis that it is Jesus as the New Solomon who is defending his special kind of kingship here against a conventional view on kingship proposed by the Devil. The Devil thus represents the option of conventional behavior and is by that an obstacle for the fulfillment of the will of God. However, a dualism of God and Devil is not the theme of the pericope. (Please note: This paper will be presented in German, the discussion will take place in both German and English).

This paper focuses on two intriguing aspects of the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 15-17 and its rewriting in Jubilees 14-15. Firstly, one could wonder why at all two covenants with Abraham are mentioned. The two covenant pericopes referred to in Genesis 15 and 17 derive from different literary sources (non-P and P respectively). It still remains a matter of debate how the P covenant in Genesis 17 and its non-P counterpart in Genesis 15 are related. It is hard to explain, for example, why a divine-human covenant is established twice, especially since they have different promissory foci. At this point it is interesting to see how Jubilees deals with the issue. Although Jubilees tends to avoid doublets, it transmits both covenant pericopes which sheds light on Jubilees’ interpretation of the contents and function of the two covenants in Genesis 15 and 17. Secondly, the sign of the covenant in Genesis 17 also raises questions. Circumcision as sign of the covenant functions as a marker for those who are part of the covenant and those who are not. It is puzzling that Abraham’s first son Ishmael is circumcised in Genesis 17:23 although the text at the other hand clearly states that God does not establish his covenant with Ishmael, but with Isaac alone. How come that Ishmael was circumcised when he is not supposed to be part of the covenant of which circumcision is its sign? Also in this respect, it is interesting to observe how Jubilees makes sense of its Vorlage.

Studies on Galatians have tended to neglect the issue of suffering in the original setting of the Galatian crisis almost universally. Yet there have been some scholars who have sought to demonstrate the prevalence of suffering and persecution in the letter (e.g. Baasland, Goddard and Cummins, etc...). If suffering is legitimately a part of the background to the situation, we ought to expect various aspects of Paul's rhetorical strategy and argumentation to be aimed at the Galatians' current state of suffering. In this study I will argue that one such place (among others) where this is discernible is in the letter's pneumatology (cf. Gal 3.1-5; 4.1-7, 21-31). The motifs of inheritance and promise will be addressed alongside the 'promise of the Spirit' (Gal 3.14) in order to show how the Spirit acts as the assurance of final reward in the midst of suffering. This likewise is intended by Paul to counter assumptions that suffering is proof of being cursed by other-worldly powers.

The Law of Assembly (Deut 23:2-9) regulates the exclusion of distinct groups from the assembly of Yhwh and the possible inclusion of others in it. Current research controversially discusses the principles and historical background of these regulations. Understood, for example, as a social or as a religious regulation, it could refer either to war participants or mixed marriages. The suggestions for dating cover at least the late monarchy to the Persian Period. My paper focuses on the legal relations towards the neighboring countries. I shall begin my analysis by examining the terminology used and relate it to similar expressions in the ANE treaty literature. Additionally, I shall show that the terms used for relations with accepted foreigners (ger for Egyptians and 'ah for Edomites) correspond to the basic structure of the deuteronomic inner-Israelite society. In dating the law’s basic layer two paths are chosen: first, the chronology of the inner-biblical receptions is determined. The oldest reception – the exilic Lam 1:10 – leads to a preexilic dating for the law. Second, by considering biblical reflections on such points of time in which positive allusions to the Edomites and Egyptians in combination with negative ones to the Ammonites and Moabites are plausible, Jehoiakim's reign (2 Kgs 24:1-5) can be shown as the best fitting situation. Combining the contractural insight and the Jehoiakim dating, I shall propose a new interpretation. Just before the fall of Jerusalem the Edomites and Egyptians, as Judah's last possible allies, are stylized as compatible with the fundamental principles of the people's own idealized society. Among native Judahites, the law advertizes a positive attitude to these neighbors. In the biblical and extra-biblical reception of Deut 23:2-9 this orientation to particular strangers is enlarged.

As I am very impressed by the immediacy that the psalms have produced over the centuries of reception-history, I am looking for strategies which readers can use in order to identify with the situations, the characters and the experiences described in the psalms. For this purpose I use Werner Wolf’s thereotical framework of aesthetic illusion as a feeling of being recentered in a possible world as if it were life. In literary studies narrative illusion refers to the fact that one does not just watch the world narrated in a text from a distance but has the impression of being present in it and, above all, of experiencing it in a way similar to that in which one experiences life. Thus narrative illusion means the quasi-experience of reality and, as a reception phenomenon, depends on the reader and the context as well as on the text. Focussing on the text, Werner Wolf presents six general principles of illusion-making in literary fiction. Two of them (the principle of perspectivity and the principle of generating interest in the possible world) are very important for identification in lyric. As I am mainly interested in the recipient´s emotions which are prominent in the principle of generating an emotional interest in the text-world, I will concentrate on this aspect in the text-analysis. Readers´ emotions can be triggered in various ways, one of which is the expression of emotions in the texts themselves, for example in the verbal images of the psalms. Here, especially metaphors are a way of evoking readers´ interests and producing emotional tension. The analysis of metaphors of fear/sadness and joy in Ps 22 and Ps 34 should therefore be a way of getting closer to the mechanism of expressing emotions in lyrics as an important aspect of text-based identification in the psalms.

Reception History has become the subject of recent discussions at professional societies and conferences in Biblical Studies. The greater visibility of research into the reception of the Bible at these meetings may suggest that it is becoming a more accepted area of academic research in the discipline. Nevertheless, the title of one of the more formal debates, the SOTS 2011 Winter Meeting panel discussion ‘Reception History: Essential Part of Biblical Studies or Optional Extra?’, suggests that the validity of the research into the myriad ways in which the biblical text has been interpreted, retold and reappropriated remains undecided. One of the major criticisms of research into biblical reception appeared to be its lack of focus on the text. Focusing  on Genesis 3 and popular cultural representations of the transgression episode, this paper will argue that far from being divorced from the biblical text, the study of the function, influence and impact of the Bible can allow us new insights into its stories, characters and themes.

In biblical poetry, avian metaphors are frequently used in descriptions of human actions and attitudes. This is hardly surprising, since birds were visible almost everywhere in the landscape, or cityscape, inhabited by the ancient Israelites. Equally important, the song of birds must have been a prominent feature in the soundscape. This paper explores the emotive aspects of avian imagery. Interestingly, birds are not always, or primarily, associated with joy in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on a number of prophetic and poetic passages (e.g. Ps 102:7-8; Isa 38:34; 59:11; Nah 2:8) which express feelings of sadness and solitude, the analysis aims at answering the following questions: Which birds are associated with these emotions? How can this association be explained in each case? Paying attention to the literary context as well as to pertinent inter-texts (for instance, from Mesopotamia), this study will also draw on observations relating to the behaviour (including the song/sound) of the birds mentioned in the texts.

In this paper I will engage queer theory as a useful approach in biblical studies, i. e. as a critical practice examining how contemporary norms produce and form the illusion of a stable intelligible subject. This approach will be demonstrated through a queer reading of the Book of Ruth. To this end, using queer theory, two inquiries are offered: the first inquiry focuses on those constitutive conditions through which a subject is denied or granted a subject position, and how the process of ‘becoming’ an intelligible subject is intertwined with heteronormative concepts of gender and sexuality. While focusing on gender and sexuality the theoretical framework is provided by Judith Butler´s theory of performativity. Gendered subjects are here interpreted as constructed by performative means. The second inquiry discusses, suggested through my queer theoretical reading, the history of sexuality provided by Michel Foucault, and its applications in biblical studies. I do this, however, with the help of queer theorists such as Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Lee Edelman.

On the occassion of the presentation of a Festschrift for Wayne Rollins, this paper will highlight some of his contributions to the psychological hermenutics of the bible.

The dream narratives in Genesis 28 and Daniel 7-9 constitute remarkably innovative notions that were not in compliance with the general cultural and theological worldview of their own moment. Each one of these narratives, nonetheless, set in motion an entirely new way of viewing the world. Jacob’s vision set the covenant theology whispered winsomely in Genesis 12 and 17 on a new trajectory of particularistic ideology. Daniel’s dream-vision of the heavenly Son of Man promotes a radical apocalyptic ideology that carries the narcissistic particularism of earlier Judaism into a global perspective in which Israelite messianism take form at the expense of the denigration of all other ethnic entities. This paper suggests the psychology forces in the specific cultural settings of each narrative and the psychotheology that took shape in them, in consequence.

The association of the Essenes with the site of Qumran, and the specific instructions regarding latrine placement and etiquette in the Temple and War Scrolls, combine to make the toilet practices of the Qumran community an issue with a direct relation to the study of the site and of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The texts most often associated with toilet practices at Qumran present accounts and instructions which are incompatible with each other, while the presence of a cesspit toilet in Locus 51 of Qumran contradicts each of these texts. Further, the difficulties presented by this toilet’s presence are increased by its being taken out of use at the end of Period Ib of the site (31 BC), after which it appears not to have been replaced – a development which suggests either a significant change in Qumranites’ beliefs after 31 BC, or a change in the makeup of the community’s inhabitants themselves. Finally, the combination of the material evidence regarding toilet practices at Khirbet Qumran, the contradictions in the literary sources thought to address them, and scholarly attempts to rationalize or circumvent these contradictions should serve to reinforce the importance of proper methodology and evidence-based analysis to the current and future study of Qumran, its inhabitants, and their connection to the Scrolls.

According to Gen 21:9, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, me?aheq [LXX/some Vulgate codices add: “with her son Isaac”]” and thus demanded the expulsion of both Ishmael and Hagar his mother. While the biblical text leaves the reader uncertain as to the specific nature of Ishmael’s behaviour, visual representations of the scene offer the viewer a variety of answers based on the septuagintal text, Jewish and Christian interpretations of the story, and contemporary historical events. Although the earliest interpretations of the verb me?aheq are laughing and dancing (Jubilees) or playing (Septuagint ), later Jewish and Christian exegetes attribute more sinister implications to the seemingly innocent participle. In this paper, I suggest that the depictions of this scene by book illustrators and painters – such as Cornelis Engelbrechtsz and Jan Mostaert – reflect their theological, sociological, and political convictions, each adopting the interpretation of me?aheq corresponding to their image of Ishmael and what Ishmael symbolized for them. The visual representations of this biblical text are thus frequently not merely illustrative but also manipulative.

The Shulgi Prophecy, one of the five so-called Akkadian ex eventu texts, has intrigued and confounded scholars since its discovery in the late nineteenth century. While early attempts to situate this document posited a wide range of settings, recent scholarship has coalesced around the hypothesis of Borger, which placed its origins in the late Kassite period. Although this theory accounts for the available internal evidence well, the neo-Assyrian archaeological settings of the two known exemplars of this text raise questions that require further consideration in detailing its dating and composition history. Why did a Babylonian text of the late thirteenth century BCE suddenly reappear in Assyria half a millennium later? Why was the Assyrian monarchy interested enough in this document to have it copied multiple times and deposited into a royal library? Linking the Shulgi Prophecy to its most referenced location, the city of Nippur, a plausible explanation arises. Nippur suffered a catastrophic decline when the course of the Euphrates shifted away from the city ca. 1225 BCE, quickly falling into a state of near fatal paralysis until the return of the river’s waters in the mid-eighth century, leading to its reemergence in short order. Interpreting the collective restoration of Bad-Tibira, Girsu, Lagash, and Nippur forecast in the fragmentary col. V against this backdrop, a two-part hypothesis for the setting of the Shulgi Prophecy is proposed: 1) an original failed attempt to prophesy the return of the Euphrates to its previous course at the end of the thirteenth century and 2) its subsequent use by the neo-Assyrian monarchy as a means by which to take credit for the revival of various Babylonian cities.

In this paper I interpret 1 Cor. 15:32 before and after the arrival of the arenas and amphitheater in Roman Corinth. To do this I first establish that the arenas in Corinth were converted from theaters sometime in the early third-century CE, a date which likely holds also for the nearby amphitheater. Second, despite the later date of the arenas, I focus on particular images of beast fights in the larger arena—reliefs of Heracles’ labors on the scaenae frons, which date before the arena conversion, and paintings of men and beasts on the arena wall, which post-date the arena conversion. The transformation of the theaters into arenas broadens the range of possible interpretations of traditional images of beast fights by juxtaposing such images with live contests, from heroic idealism (overcoming wild beasts) to tragic spectacle (succumbing to wild beasts). Finally, in light of this transformation I propose the following range of interpretations for 1 Cor. 15:32 before and after the arenas arrived. Before: Paul’s beast fight evokes traditional images of hunters, mythological figures, and/or heroes without altering the logic of heroic and predatory advantage except to the extent that the effect of death might not remain permanent. After: Paul’s beast fight interacts with heroic and mythological scenes and the arena contests so as to suggest that advantage over death is not certain; rather, the encounter with death in the arena threatens even (perhaps especially) those who assume an advantage over it.

By making smoke offerings to the bronze serpent (Nehushtan) the Israelites were aligning themselves with the “abominable” practices of their pagan ANE neighbours. Jonker (2008:132) suggests that in the rewriting of the Deuteronomic history, the omission of the destruction of Nehushtan during Hezekiah’s reforms is because the Chronicler wanted to harmonize “the different traditions without compromising himself by introducing associations that would jeopardize his programme of forming a new identity”. Apparently for theological reasons, some priestly factions were concerned with camouflaging the practice of the magic and divination in Israelite history. However, the definition of magic depends on the “religio-cultural framework for which and within which it is defined”, and in the Jewish tradition, magic and mystic are firmly tied together (Mach 2000a:235). In Ezekiel 1, the text which became a foundation of merkebah mysticism, hashmal (bronze/amber) contributes to the description of an electricity-like power emanating from God’s throne. By considering the biblical references to, and the lexicography of nehushtan, hanash, nehoshet and hashmal (all of them are associated with bronze and share two consonants), this investigation explores the possibility that the perceived magical qualities of the bronze snake that Moses made on Yahweh’s instruction, whether of healing or fertility, were, by the late Persian period, seen to be of the same order as the hashmal/amber/electron in Ezekiel 1. In view of the fact that later the reading of the merkebah chapters was forbidden, awareness of the connection of nehushtan to merkebah mysticism may have contributed to the omission.

In both Matt. 13, 54-58 and Mc. 6, 1-6 the people in the synagogue are offended by Jesus. They voice their critique in a number of questions, among which seems to be a reference to Jesus’ occupation, te/ktwn, commonly translated as Carpenter or an equivalent in the many languages of Bible translation. However, this set of questions also occurs as a standard set with small variations in a number of texts of church fathers and in extra-canonical and apocryphal literature. But nowhere is Jesus accused of carpentry, instead he is said to be a magician. Iconographic evidence of Christian sarcophagi from the 2nd to 4th century in Rome also depict Jesus as performing his well-known miracles yielding a magic wand. Comparing these accusatory texts with the NT ones, the word te/ktwn merits attention. Is it the translation of the Aramaic ‘nagar’, as Maurice Casey asserts, or can the case for another word be made that would throw more light on this problem?

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Taking as a starting point the compilation Memorias da Litteratura Portugueza, by António Ribeiro dos Santos (1792), it is my goal in this paper to analyze the production of Jewish literature, manuscripts and printed editions, in the last quarter of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While doing this, I will evaluate, whenever possible, their current existence and whereabouts, in Portugal and/or abroad. Special attention will be given to the production of the first printers established in Portugal, as well as to the manuscripts that are said to have been copied then, with the utmost care and with a rare high quality, seldom achieved in those times in other European countries. One of the questions to be answered is in what way the 1492 and 1496 expulsions have influenced such literature, in content and in format and in quantity, and their authors, many of whom fled to/from Portugal in those occasions. Did some special genre emerge in those times, or was it just the usual, classical religious traditional literature, biblical comments, midrasim, and so on? In addition, bearing in mind the cultural environment of Ribeiro dos Santos, who writes in the late eighteenth century and showing appreciation for Jewish literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as for their authors, it will be interesting to understand his motives and goals behind the thorough listing and bibliography which he provides us with.

The most serious challenge posed by Job 4:12-21 is not one of linguistic decoding but of relation to increasingly wider contexts: Eliphaz’ speech(es), the friends’ speeches, and the book of Job as a whole. Both its message — a gloomy outlook on the moral and existential frailty of humankind (vss. 17-21) — and its medium — a nocturnal revelation usually taken for a dream (vss. 12-16) — have led some authorities to reject the relation of Job 4:12-21 to Eliphaz, indicated by its position in MT, and to attribute the passage to Job instead (H. Torczyner 1920, N. H. Tur-Sinai 1957; H. L.Ginsberg 1969; M. Weinfeld 1988; G. V. Smith 1990; E. L. Greenstein 1996, 2004, 2005; M. Gruber 2003). Job, so the argument goes, is the more likely persona behind these lines, since they agree neither with the ideas presented by Eliphaz and his friends nor with their type of wisdom. Rather, they accord with Job’s views and complaints, with his style, with quotations in the rest of the book that credit him with similar ideas, with his predilection for bad dreams and for relying on angelic beings, and even with the apparitions seen by another just sufferer, in the Babylonian Ludlul bêl nêmeqi. The proposed paper will take up these contentions, weighing them against an alternative reading of Eliphaz’ speech (inspired by Fullerton 1930), as a tour de force of ambiguity and multiple evaluations. In this reading Eliphaz emerges as a sympathetic comforter but also as a cruelly rigid advocate of standard doctrines. The paper will examine a possibility of interpreting Job 4:12-21 as part of Eliphaz’ speech: a powerful revelation of human defectiveness couched in terms that suggest its own questionability.

The Book of Jeremiah shows an interesting ambivalence with regard to the Book of the Twelve Prophets. The quotation of Micah 3:12 in Jer 26:18 is a clear sign of Jeremiah’s dependence on Micah. Similarly, Jer seems to draw on Hosea (Weider; Diamond / O’Connor; Abma) and Amos (Beyerlin; Pschibille). On the other hand, Zechariah appears to allude to Jer (Schaefer; Nurmela). Obviously, the Book of Jeremiah has a place in the middle of the formation of the Book of the Twelve, and allows a glance into its genesis. This also raises the question of Jeremiah’s relationship with other ‘Minor’ Prophets, especially those in between, like Obadiah, Nahum, Habbakuk, and Zephaniah. Some specific connections (Obad 1-5 and Jer 49:9,14-16; Nah 3:19 and Jer 30:12; Hab 2:13 and Jer 51:58) may serve as examples to discuss the processes of writing in the Persian Period and as criteria to distinguish their relative dependence.

The international project “Bible and Women. An Encyclopedia of Exegesis and Cultural History” last year presented the first volume, Torah, in all four languages. The Volume on the Gospels in Spanish and German as well as the first volume of medieval reception in Italian have just been published. Other four volumes are in preparation to be published in the next two years and the project continues to organize research colloquia for the next volumes and continues to publish fresh research.

This paper first profiles the many Psalms scrolls found at Qumran, then considers whether they together form a “library” or should be placed in several groupings. I will also discuss citations of, or allusions to, passages from the “book” of Psalms among the sectarian scrolls, whether these concentrate on any sections of the Psalter, and whether they predominate in specific periods of the history of the Yahad movement. The final section considers which sectarian themes or topics are emphasized by the use of various Psalms in the sectarian scrolls.

The topics of the paper will be the following: a) The relationships between the prose envelope and the body of poetry, and between the writer and his hero; b) Job's epistemology: the connection between chs. 26 and 27, the special role of the beginning of 27, the nature and function of ch.28; c) The positions of 26-28 and 29-31, the function of the triad 29-30-31 and the crucial passage 42:5-7. In short, it will be studied how this major composition and its parts appear to full advantage in the light of poetics and the poet's numerical perfection.

The setting of a saying about the snake charmer in Qohelet 10:11 ("If a snake bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer") in juxtaposition to admonitions regarding various dangerous activities of a routine nature (vv. 8-10) has raised hermeneutical questions. This paper attempts to interrelate this saying with the juxtaposed cluster of sayings about the fool (10:12-15) by offering an additional understanding of the expressions blo’ lakhsh and ba’al ha-lashon. Examination of the figure of the wicked man in two psalms (58:4-5; 140:4), along with the epithet ‘ish lashon (140:12) suggests a similarity to the image of the fool in Qohelet (as well as in Proverbs). The intertextual relationship between Psalms 140:4 and Qohelet 10:11 contributes to the understanding of the vague idiom ba’al ha-lashon in the latter verse and may prove its connection to the proximate cluster of sayings about the fool.

In the Hebrew Bible Jezreel is mentioned more than thirty times and the identification of Iron Age remains in the 1980’s led to the partial excavation of the site in the 1990’s by David Ussishkin and John Woodhead on behalf of Tel Aviv University and the British School of Archaeology respectively. They identified an Iron Age rectangular fortified enclosure and a rock-cut moat which they attributed to the Omride dynasty. Also visible were remains from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader and Ottoman periods. In addition there were clues for occupation during the Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and the earlier phases of the Iron Age. To the east of the enclosure there are grape preparation areas and other agricultural installations, exposed in the 1980’s, which evoke the story of Naboth’s vineyard. Yet there are also archaeological remains some 800 meters north of the enclosure, at a much lower elevation and overlooking the perennial spring of Jezreel. Two small surveys conducted there in the 1960’s and the 1990’s provided evidence for occupation throughout all the periods, up to and including the Iron Age, yet this area has not been excavated. The Jezreel Expedition (http://www.jezreel-expedition.com/) recently commissioned a LiDAR (laser) survey of Jezreel and the surrounding area. The LiDAR generated 3-D model is presently being studied, while our growing collection of digitized historical maps and photographs are currently being georeferenced with the model. Eventually the data from previous surveys and excavations, especially architectural artifacts, will be plotted on the model. We believe this approach to be an important tool for understanding and defining the extent of the site of “greater” Jezreel and an essential aid in planning future excavation strategy. The complexities of the site, our strategy and preliminary results will be presented here for the first time.

In the proem to his work Antiquities of the Jews, Flavius Josephus explains that he intends to present his readers with a depiction of the Jewish people’s “entire ancient history and the political constitution translated from the Hebrew scriptures” (Ant 1,5). Having in his previous work on the Jewish war recounted events closely related to his own present time, he has thus in Antiquities broadened his focus significantly. According to the above statement (that is: if we are to take it at face value) he has now engaged himself in a historiographical project of a highly cosmogenetic nature. And elsewhere in the proem he claims that the content of the work will set forth “the precise details of the Scriptures (…) each in its own place” (Ant 1,17), just as he promises not to add or omit anything. As it will be demonstrated in this paper these claims are however in no way in keeping with his actual methodological approach to his use of the Old Testament Scriptures, which can in fact be described as highly creative at best. Just how creative he actually is, will be explored further in the paper taking his treatment of the story of King David’s census and the subsequent plague (2 Sam 24 and 1 Chron 21) in Ant 7,318ff. as the point of departure. In this paper particular emphasis will thus be laid on Josephus’ rewriting process and the various ways in which he adapts and transforms the overall plot and the biblical characters in this particular narrative. All of this in an attempt to shed light on his use and reception of the Scriptures.

1Enoch 6-11, the story of the rebellion of the Watchers originates the sins that lead to the punition of the the Flood from the sin of the heavenly beings who descended to the earth, and defiled themselves with earthly women. Their offspring were devouring giants who caused a cosmic dysfunction on the earth. Further tradition on the giants is contained in the Book of Giants, a text belonging to the Enochic tradition and known in fragmentary form from Qumran. The above tradition, together with the Astronomical Book belong to the oldest manuscript tradition from Qumran (3rd c. BCE) and reflect a solid awarness with Mesopotamian literary and scientific tradition. The ideas on the gigantic stature and devouring character of the sons of the Watchers tally with Mesopotamian ideas related to demonic and semidivine beings. Cosmological speculations in later Enochic literature (1En 37-71, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch) reflect a system of various heavens with a hiearchy of the angels who are rulers of the courses of the heavely bodies and natural phenomena, and who are portrayed by a fiery character and the gigantic stature of their bodies. The Watchers depicted with sideral characteristics are several times mentioned among them as „the two hundred angels” in the first heaven. The paper aims to investigate the way in which exilic Jewish authors emulated ideas of the imperial culture when creating a myth of the origin of the evil in 1 En 6-11, and the surviving of these ideas in later Jewish tradition.

A politics of resistance involves the use of tactics by those in subordinate positions to achieve slight, momentary advantages (de Certeau; Bhabha). These subtle shifts entail changing the valence of the dominant ideology and, so, transforming the nature of the discourse. The trope of feasting found in Daniel 5 may be viewed as one such example. Though Daniel 5 has been the object of considerable scholarship, few have focused on the feast as a trope, or elucidated the authors’ skilled and subversive alteration of its elements. Recent scholarship has shown a relation between the royal feast and the (literary) motif of judgment (Winter 1986; MacDonald 2008). Viewed from this perspective, a comparison of Belshazzar’s feast with its ancient Near Eastern parallels brings out significant details highlighting the ironic position taken in the text: the use of metal vessels that signals a change in setting (v. 3); the praise of deities that portends a covenantal context (v. 4); the possible visual specter of palatial iconography (v. 5); and the spectacle of the king’s dissolution that stands in violent contrast with the ideal type of Oriental despot (v. 6). These changes in the literary convention of the trope make judgment inevitable (v. 30). By turning the table, as it were, we argue that the author(s) of Daniel inscribed a space for resistance within the prevailing discourse of domination.

As defined in the biblical lexicons, the entries for ?amas read "treat violently, wrong: of physical wrong (or) of ethical wrong (or) both physical and ethical"; "violence, wrong"; and "theft, exploitation, social oppression". Yet, the treatment of ?amas in the scriptural context requires a more nuanced approach and translation. Notwithstanding, as reflected in the usual exegesis of the verses in which it appears in Ezekiel hamas is understood to refer to social violence. I suggest, however, that a closer examination of each of the seven occurrences of this term in Ezekiel not only indicates that this interpretation is not inevitable, but rather, its precise meaning must be determined according to each specific context in which it appears. Examination of the semantic fields in which hamas occurs in Ezekiel shows that it refers to the cultic sins of the people that led to the destruction of the Temple. I suggest that in Ezekiel hamas serves as a general term for the people's sins against God, for the most severe sins in particular, including idolatry and bloodshed.

This lecture will examine the relation between two lost Midrashic compositions: the lost Midrash Yelamdenu and Midrash wa-yehullu. Between the citations from these compositions there is not a small amount of linguistic parallels. Based on the many verified citations from these compositions (including new citations from Midrash wa-yehullu) we will try to discover whether Midrash wa-yehullu is another name for Midrash Yelamdenu (as proposed by Shalom Albek) or another Midrash (which took from Yelamdenu) or perhaps a tendentious adaptation of it. Following this examination we will deal with the question of the workshop behind the creation of these Midrashim and its orientation.

During the years 1957 to 1962 substantial archaeological excav ations were conducted at the site of el-Jib by James B. Pritchard. His main discoveries include the remains of a double-line of fortifications, an elaborate water system with a stepped tunnel and a circular pool, the remains of houses, and a series of sunken rock-cut installations, identified as wine cellars. The identification of the site with biblical Gibeon was secured through the discovery of numerous jar handles inscribed with the name of Gibeon. This presentation offers a new dating scheme for the water system and fortifications based on the published reports, an examination of archival sources, and visits to the site. I will be suggesting that the fortification walls date from the Iron Age II (8th century BCE) and the Hellenistic/Roman periods respectively, rather than from the Early Iron Age and Iron Age II, as suggested by Pritchard. The water system, I will argue, was clearly built together with the earliest of the defenses, i.e. in the 8th century BCE, but contin ued in use until Hellenistic/Roman times. The circular rock-cut "pool" is identified as a large public silo of the Iron Age II, at least in its earliest stage, and the numerous Iron Age II rock-cut pits found at the site are probably silos not "wine cellars."

In biblical texts the emotion of joy and the way it is experienced respectively observed is expressed in various ways. Frequently the Hebrew root sm? (joy/rejoice) is combined with verbs of singing or praising, but also dancing or leaping. Furthermore the heart and the face play a special role in the literary description of joy. With regard to the metaphorical images used to express the emotion of joy, yet another aspect common to most descriptions of joy becomes evident: joy transforms the appearance of the joyful. Thus joy is shown as an emotion that manifests itself externally as it transforms those who experience joy. In this paper I will trace the metaphorical concept of “joy as a transformation” and show on various examples, which transformations joy initiates according to the biblical texts. Two aspects of joy as transformation will be considered in particular: (1) Transformation of communication: The emotion of joy usually is given a voice or is shown. These descriptions of change again make use of metaphorical images; e.g. the image of a container that overflows; or a force that sets into motion. Not only people are affected by such transformations but the metaphorical speech includes the land as well. (2) Transformation of appearance: Joy is portrayed as an emotion that changes the appearance. In particular, metaphorical images of plants are used to show how joyful people become beautiful and more alive. In a similar way metaphors of light are used to point out how joy transforms their facial expressions.

The works of Philo of contain a great deal of exhortatory and philosophical discourse concerning the offering of sacrifices to God. Philo’s general religious outlook may be characterized as being philosophical and noetic; nevertheless, his commitments to Judaism and the Pentateuch necessitated both that he deal with sacrifice and that he do so positively. It is also significant in this regard that Philo visited the Jerusalem Temple and participated in its cult. At certain moments Philo expounds upon sacrifice directly and at length. This discourse is often of an exhortatory character, arguing that sacrifices should be disinterested, intellectual expressions of gratitude to God, provider and creator of everything. That is, God’s special characteristics necessitate that humans engage with him in a special mode of reciprocity. At other moments Philo criticizes common ‘mistaken’ assumptions regarding sacrifice. These criticisms intimate that people believe sacrifices to function in the same manner as gifts between people, having the capability to bribe or flatter because they fulfill some need or desire on the part of the recipient. Philo believes such views are mistaken, because God is not like people; he cannot be influenced by gifts because he has no real need or desire for anything. In my view, such statements provide valuable evidence for reconstructing popular notions about the practical logic of sacrifice. Finally, Philo occasionally makes statements involving sacrifice that do not carry the philosophical and exhortatory burden of the statements above. In such statements Philo simply takes for granted that sacrifices are an appropriate means to make certain requests of God or to thank God for the receipt of certain goods. These statements are valuable because they suggest that Philo’s default position or assumption in regard to sacrifices is that they are an effective means of engaging in reciprocity with God.

Micah 1:10-16, which describes the extension of the judgment of Samaria in 1:2-7 to Judah and Jerusalem, is very difficult in the MT and in the LXX. There are many toponyms, and in the MT there is extended play between the names of the towns and their predicted doom. The LXX translator did not recognize all the toponyms, nor did he recognize the word play on them. Furthermore, in the LXX the thoughts in this passage are not always clearly connected, and the intended meaning is difficult to discern in several places. Thus, the LXX seems to presuppose a Hebrew Vorlage quite different than the MT. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the translation technique of the LXX translator. Our understanding of the translator’s translation technique will help us better understand the LXX text and translator and better employ the LXX in our text-critical work on the Hebrew of this passage.

In 1979 H.J. Franken and R. S. Abujaber surveyed Tell el-‘Umayri, a small site outside Amman, where Early Bronze through Hellenistic material culture has been excavated by the Madaba Plains Project-‘Umayri since 1987. Late Bronze/Iron Age deposits at the acropolis include well-preserved buildings, with abundant ceramics, vegetal, and faunal remains. Over 25,000 fragmented animal bones of domesticated animals were packed in a pit with LB/Iron Age collar rim storage jars, cookware, seals, and metals. Age, sex, kill-off patterns, and skeletal parts bones imply the physical remains of feasts as described in texts from urban centers, such as Ugarit and Emar. Adjacent to the deposit stands a four-room structure with 70-100 collar rim jars. Some held barley and other foodstuffs. Could land adjacent to ‘Umayri produce sufficient crops to fill 100 jars? Abujaber’s published accounts of productivity and labor resources, needed to cultivate the ‘Umayri hinterland over the past century, provide a starting place. Together with recent studies of traditional farming practices in north Jordan, one can examine if the hinterland produced the large quantities of foodstuffs stored at ‘Umayri. The site sits next to the only permanent fresh water source between Amman and Madaba. It may have been the scene of seasonal harvest celebrations, including feasts, at least during the LB/Iron Age. The site is marked by one remaining dolmen, which functioned as a dynamic social construct that underwent cultural transformations over the millennia, from burial place to regional sacred site of adopted ancestors.

While there has been a great deal of interest in the Enochic “Book of Watchers” over the past generation, a number of basic issues regarding the sons of the watchers have been surprisingly not given much attention. This paper addresses one such issue—the physical description of the giants. It is central to the narrative that they be understood as powerful and destructive creatures. The reader is given enough cues to vividly imagine them rampaging upon the earth but the text does not provide many specific elements of their physical description. There are key manuscript differences regarding the key texts. A major issue in the study of their appearance is what we mean by the term “giant” and if it is warranted to imagine them as incredibly tall. I will argue that there is some evidence for this view but that the authors of the text imagined them as incredibly tall should not be taken as a given. I shall argue that they were understood as powerful warriors, probably tall but not incredibly so (that is, closer to 7 feet in height than 1000). There are also some warrants for imaging them as bearing swords and having wings, like the gigantes of the Pergamon frieze. One can also speculate on the physical description of the giants on the basis of other accounts of offspring born of mixed human-angelic stock, such as the birth of Noah in 1 Enoch 106.

The present paper will deal with Isaiah 23:1-18, a prophecy of doom against Tyre, following a prophecy on the city's restoration after seventy years. The dating of this prophecy and its background is not clear and several options have been offered. The present paper will deal anew with this problem, incorporating some extra-biblical data, which make possible the dating of the prophecy to a relatively specific historical period.

This paper will summarize the results of the ESHM meetings from my perspective as the ESHM organizer and editor.

There are many texts which are, to use M. Bakhtin's term, "in dialogue" with the "text of terror" that comprises Judges 19. There are many allusions to other texts in this story and it seems clear that the author was influenced by them. The most obvious and best known inter-text is that of Gen. 19, the story of Lot's offer to hand over his daughters to the angry men of Sodom to protect his guests, the angels from being molested by the mob. But there are many more verbal echoes, such as "speak to her heart" (daber al lev) which link this text to others such as Gen. 34 and Hosea 2, or the knife (ma-achelet) used by Abraham in Gen. 22 or the outrage (nevala) referred to in the rapes in Gen. 34 and II Sam. 13. There are also thematic issues, such as hospitality, encouraging war, vengeance, trafficking in women, which can be compared and contrasted and linked to this text. I plan to show that Judges 19 is not only a self-contained text but that when it dialogues with other texts, it gains new meaning as well as offering commentary on the inter-texts. I hope to show that the story of the Concubine of Gibeah which is often ignored (much as was Shakespeare's bloody, violent, play Titus Andronicus) is more than just an autonomous text because it is in an inter-textual relationship to so many others. In deciding which texts borrow elements such as plot, phrases, polemics from the other, we will also be learning about how this particular woman was "raped by the pen".

My paper will focus on the poetic corpus of the Jonah piyyutim and on the homiletic text of Midrash Teshuvat Yonah - outlining the literary differences while pointing out similar elements and possible contacts between these representative of the realm of late aggadic "prose" and the realm of liturgical poetry.

In this paper I shall argue that although digital publishing has certain advantages over traditional publishing in print, the advantages of digital over printed academic books are differences in quality, not in kind. Thus digital books may be thought to be the same, but in some respects better (and in some respects less useful) than printed academic books. I shall draw on specific examples, mainly from Oxford Biblical Scholarship Online, and I shall consider both continuities and discontinuities between the process and results of academic publishing in both digital and printed forms.

It is commonly asserted either that there is no reference to resurrection of the dead in Hebrew Scripture or that the earliest reference to such a belief is found in Daniel 12. Interestingly, while the standard Jewish daily liturgy does invoke Daniel 12 in support of the dogma of resurrection, it also invokes Hannah's song of thankfulness, in which she clearly asserts, "The Lord killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up" (1 Sam. 2:6). It is this very assertion that Job in Job 7:9 turns on its head and negates when he states, "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more." Apparently, the failure to follow the authors of the standard Jewish liturgy in recognizing 1 Sam. 2:6 as a declaration of the belief in resurrection derives from the a priori assumption that the belief in resurrection had been added on to Judaism in the Hellenistic period. Reexamination of the Song of Hannah both in its possibly pre-monarchic context and in light of its treatment in Job 7:9 may suggest that some common assumptions about the evolution of Israelite religion need, at the very least, to be reexamined.

The enigmatic meaning of 3 Macc 2:31 has long frustrated scholars. The problems concern the identity of the "city", the meaning of eusebeia of the city, and the rendering of the word tas epibathras. While many scholars see the city as Jerusalem and the eusebeia as Judaism, J. Tromp suggests these indicate Alexandria and idolatry. I will propose a new explanation to the entire opening segment of this verse, seeing epibathra as "base, foundation" (LSJ p. 623). A fascinating, unique portrait of a Diasporan Jew, who considers Alexandria his city and regards Judaism along with loyalty to the regime as two sides of the same coin will thus emerge. Parallel and opposing Jewish views will be taken into account in order to portray the full theoretical spectrum regarding Diasporan Jewry's affiliation with the city of Alexandria.

In Isaiah 7:14 a promised son is called with the name Immanuel. This was no ordinary personal name in Israel in the 8. century BCE, it was symbolic and used to convey a message to king Ahab of Jerusalem, similar to other symbolic names, like Shear-jashub (7:3) and Maher-shalal-hash-baz (8:1), or the symbolic naming in Hosea 1-2. That Yahweh is ‘with’ people and individuals is a central concept in the Hebrew Bible In the Hebrew Bible the divine ‘with-ness’ is related to - the election theology (Yahweh has chosen Israel and individuals), - the exodus motif (Yahweh has been with Israel out of Egypt), - the war ideology (Yahweh followed Israel at war), - the covenant theology (cf. the covenant formula), - the priestly theology and temple theology (Yahweh is with his people as dwelling at the sanctuary). - Yahweh is ‘with’ perpetually as well as temporarily, collectively and individually, conditionally and unconditionally. What is the origin of the idea that God is ‘with’ his people and individuals? It can be traced back to Ancient Near Eastern war ideology, where the gods were with their peoples. Were there other ancient near eastern understandings of divine ‘with-ness’? Did the Israelites borrow the idea of divine ‘with-ness’ from their neighbours? Was it just a common ancient understandig? Did the Israelites have their own variant of this understanding?

The discoveries of almost 930 manuscripts near the site of Qumran, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, precise our knowledge of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianism. All serious study needs to have an established text-source. Therefore the study of manuscript is a necessity. The Qumran manuscripts present the difficulty to be very fragmentary and many fragments have disappeared forever. Are we able to restore or restitue the lost text or more precisely, how evaluate the probability of restorations or restitutions? We propose a method based on a software of computer aided drawing to write with the scribal hand. The alleged restitutions by scholars can be evaluated. Moreover this outlook may allow knowing better the scribes of the Qumran community. By this method, we wish to make a directory of scribal scripts. Thus we may know if the manuscripts have been copied by the same scribe and also to know the nature and the evolution of the scribal milieu at Qumran.

Inheritance language is striking in Hebrews, beginning with the identification of the Son as the heir of all things (1:2), who is later understood as the mediator of a new covenant that enables reception of the eternal inheritance (9:15). This use of inheritance language is deeply rooted in the OT. This paper will briefly outline the “hermeneutical worldview” that accounts for the author of Hebrews’s understanding and appropriation of the OT inheritance motif. The term hermeneutical worldview indicates the integrated way of viewing reality that informs the author’s appropriation of the OT and understanding of God’s redemptive actions as both occurring within history and transcending history to point to a heavenly, eternal reality. The pivot of this worldview is God’s final Word, Jesus Christ, now seated in heaven at God’s right hand. The inheritance motif in Hebrews must be understood in terms of the Abrahamic promises, which are interwoven with a rich cluster of related themes, such as covenant, the tabernacle, and God’s holy mountain. This paper argues that inheritance language enables the author of Hebrews to access both the Abrahamic promises and these related themes. Moreover, the inheritance motif is inherently future-oriented, as indicated by its association with several significant OT typological trajectories, such as the Sabbath rest and God’s presence in Zion. Inheritance language enables the author to appropriate these trajectories and to extend them to their eschatological fulfillment. Obtaining the eternal inheritance is understood as entering the Sabbath rest and the heavenly Zion, both of which point to the same ultimate reality, namely, worship in God’s presence through Jesus Christ. For the original audience, this understanding of the inheritance motif would have encouraged them to persevere, knowing that their true identity and destination were not endangered by their present experience of persecution within the Roman Empire.

Early Christian responses to voluntary martyrdom and willful flight under persecution were ‘neither simple nor systematic’ (Weidmann). For example, Eusebius described heaven-yearning Christians who ‘rushed’ (??µ??) toward the Caesarean court, where they were judged and eventually martyred (HE 7.12.1). Using the same verb, Origen asserted that Christians do not ‘rush forward’ (??µ??) to arouse the wrath of authorities, seeking neither torture nor death (Against Celsus 8.65). Some early Christians chose evasion during persecution, and episcopal flight led to internal strife and ecclesiastical debate. These varied Patristic approaches to voluntary martyrdom and willful flight are highlighted in the early Christian use of Matthew 10:23. In this text, Jesus instructed his hearers to flee to the next town in the coming persecution. An anonymous tradition alleges that ‘the church’ taught its ‘children’ this Matthean injunction ‘daily’ (PG 56:614). Clement of Alexandria argued that Matthew 10:23 does not command flight per se, but simply indicates that believers were neither to cause nor abet evil (Stromata 4.10). Tertullian warned against those who used Matthew 10:23 to ‘cover up their cowardice.’ He reasoned that the Matthean injunction pertained peculiarly to ‘the persons of the apostles, and to their times and circumstances’ (On Fleeing 6). By contrast, when Origen alluded to Matthew 10.23, he insisted, ‘But even if a Christian were to run away, he would not do so for cowardice, but because he was keeping the commandment of his Master and preserving himself free from harm that others might be helped to gain salvation’ (Against Celsus 8.44). This paper will examine these and other early Christian interpretations of Matthew 10:23; but also the multiple Patristic textual variants of the verse, the use of alternative (including non-canonical) Jesus traditions as counter-arguments, and the specific role of the Matthean text in debates concerning episcopal flight.

The Masoretic Text of Nahum 2:14 is highly enigmatic from two respects: first, it employs different pronominal suffixes to refer to one and the same antecedent; second, it contains the linguistically problematic form {ml'kkh}. The enigmatic nature of this verse has been noted by many commentators, but a systematic philological investigation of Nahum 2:14 and the suffixes employed therein is still lacking. In this paper, the five pronominal suffixes in Nahum 2:14 MT, e.g., (1) {'lyk}; (2) {rkbh}; (3) {kpyryk}; (4) {trpk}; and (5) {ml'kkh}, are evaluated in light of the evidence from the versions (including 4QpNah). By so doing, it is shown how MT as it is known today came about by creatively responding to problems posed by the textual transmission of this verse. First, it is argued that (2) originates by haplography from an original *{rkbkh} ‘your (m.) chariot’(cf. TJon) – whence also *{rbkh} ‘your multitude’ (cf. 4QpNah, LXX, P) – and that all the suffixes in Nahum 2:14 were originally meant to be masculine. Second, it is elaborated that the form {rkbh} triggered the reinterpretation of the other suffixes in Nahum 2:14 as feminine; this resulted in the difficult form {ml'kkh} (which is still masculine orthographically). Third, it is shown how this feminine reinterpretation of Nahum 2:14 had a definite impact on its contents: where the original antecedent of the verse was the lions of Nahum 2:12–13, the feminine reinterpretation had to look for a new antecedent, which it found in the city of Nineveh. Hence, this paper provides a new understanding of the textual history of Nahum 2:14 and shows how one rather small change in the textual transmission of a verse could have important consequences when it triggers a reinterpretation of that same verse.

As noted by Rabinowitz in his 1985 article 'Pre-Modern Jewish Study of Rhetoric: An Introductory Bibliography', study of the intersection between the Hebrew Bible and the canons of classical rhetoric is very much a modern phenomenon. This paper will explore the efficacy of a rhetorical-critical approach to Hebrew text by examining the work of Jack Lundbom, whose AB volume 'Jeremiah 1-20' was published in 1999, paying particular attention to the role that literary figures play in his analysis.

During an extended period, the portrayal of the Essenes by Hellenistic writers, such as Josephus, Philo and Pliny dominated scholarship’s convictions about the sexual life, rather its abstinence by the Essenes, assumed to be identical with the Qumran community. Lately, however, scrolls scholarship has seen a shift in perspective, since none of the scrolls refers explicitly to celibacy. Doubts were raised, modified propositions were posited, but the concept of celibacy in Qumran was not totally debunked. This paper will postulate the utter rejection of the celibacy doctrine in Qumran, because it is against the scriptural command of procreation and its general positive attitude toward sexual life, it contradicts the spirit and rules of Qumran writings that do not indicate any disdain against women and sexual life, and because the writings of above historians are biased and unreliable regarding their depiction of the Essenes’ attitude toward sexual life. Ignoring those writings, scholars would have never hypothesized such circumstances at Qumran. The paper will cite supporting evidence for its thesis, debate the opposing opinions, and will elaborate particularly on the interpretation of 4Q?270 about sexual intercourse with a pregnant wife, disputing the allegation that Qumran prohibited sexual intercourse except for procreation.

This paper will attempt to show how early Judaism’s portrayal of wisdom took its cue from the personification in Proverbs 8 and related texts, including Job 28, but with significant and peculiar nuances that broadly fall into two categories. One category employed daring metaphors that appeared to turn personified wisdom into a superhuman being with quasi God-like features. This may be illustrated with passages from the Wisdom of Solomon. The other category developed into the opposite direction. The personification was maintained on a literary level, but ultimately turned on its head by the reification of wisdom: Personified wisdom was identified with the Torah. This interpretative move is exemplified by Ben Sira and Baruch. In Philo of Alexandria's philosophical speculations, these various interpretative strands came together in an imaginative development of the architectural aspects of the personification metaphor. From here, the paths towards the various wisdom christologies of the New Testament were natural steps to take.

Much of the history of scholarship on “hell” has been devoted to tracing genetic relationships between older texts and more recent ones, typically based upon generic elements or the specific features of hell’s landscape. This paper suggests a new direction for classics and New Testament study, focusing instead on the rhetorical function of hell in antiquity. This paper argues that the rhetorical devices of ekphrasis, enargeia and periegesis were at work in the depictions of Hell that we find in the early Christian apocalypses, namely the Apoc. Pet. and the Apoc. Paul. We begin with a definition of these rhetorical devices by examining the Progymnasmata as well as Quintillian’s work on rhetoric. Next, we will demonstrate that these rhetorical devices were at work in various ancient depictions of Hades (with examples chosen from Greek and Latin authors such as Homer, Plato, Vergil, Lucian and Plutarch). Finally we will show that this rhetorical technique was also at work in the early Christian apocalypses. In sum, we will conclude that early Christians, like the Greeks and Romans before them, used these rhetorical techniques in order to “emotionally move” their audiences toward “right behavior.”

In recent years, an increased array of sophisticated tools and a growing body of knowledge about the physical mechanisms of the brain have contributed to a greater understanding of the structures and functioning of the brain. At the same time, advances in Biblical Studies and contextual settings of biblical manuscripts has provided greater insights into biblical descriptions of human cognition from the perspective of ancient faith communities. For Christians today, there is a need for integrated perspectives that combine the core truths of Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, with contemporary scientific insights that help us to better understand the human condition and its potential. Biblical and non Biblical literature is replete with discussions of a battle within, and an inner tension between the higher human hopes and the base nature, as described by Richard Holloway (2008). The notion of a battle within is said to be a dominant paradigm in psychological, physiological and theological insights into humanity, as well as prominent biblical passages from Genesis to Revelation, and in Paul’s writings in particular. At the same time, care is needed so as not to read contemporary, individualistic notions that are prominent in contemporary psychotherapies into passages such as Romans 6 to 8, without considering Hebrew notions of communal and eschatological dimensions to which the book of Romans most likely refers. This paper explores contextual informed biblical notions of a battle within each person, in the light of Biblical insights, as well as insights from neurobiology, such as Paul MacLean’s The Triune Brain in Evolution, in order to more fully understand this battle, both biblically and neurologically, in well informed ways that can be applied to contemporary pastoral needs.

Scholars generally interpret 1 Cor 7:17-35 as Paul's negative stance against the social institutions of slavery and marriage and his advocate for manumission and celibacy. In this paper, I propose that Paul does not attack these two existing social institutions (slavery and marriage); Paul subverts the cultural values towards work and mixed marriage. This proposal is based on the rhetorical analysis of Paul's use of the term "Christ / Lord" in 1 Cor 7:17-35. Paul appeals to "Christ" in 7:17-24 for urging the audience to live out a counter-cultural life corresponding to their new patronage relation with Jesus Christ. If we put our feet into the shoes of the audience, we will find how profound and subversive Paul's teachings are to their daily lives. In 7:25-35, Paul uses "Christ" language for a critique against mixed marriage rather than marriage in general. Paul is teaching young men and women in the church about the negative consequences for an insider to marry an outsider. Since divorce is not an option after marriage or even after engagement (7:27a), Paul reminds the single young brothers and sisters who still have marital freedom to consider seriously before they enter into marriage in vv.25-35. This is counter-cultural again from the ears of the Corinthians. This fresh reading not only reveals the logic and consistent principle of Paul in addressing various concrete social situations in 1 Cor 7, it also illuminates the ways of Paul for the identity formation of early Christian community. Paul does not subvert the social institutions (slavery and marriage) per se. Paul subverts the social values of Christ-followers against the social norms entailed from them. As a result, the new christian identity is formed from inside out.

In terms of content, literary perspective, and language, the book of Jeremiah appears to be a product of the sixth century B.C.E. However, differences between the ‘long’ Masoretic version and its ‘short’ Greek counterpart have long been thought to suggest the existence of two editions in the period prior to the Common Era, an assumption confirmed by Qumran material similar to both editions. Clearly, any serious attempt to date Jeremiah must take into account the relationship between these editions. Most scholars view the longer edition as a late, secondary expansion of the shorter, dating it variously to the Persian or Hellenistic periods, chiefly on the basis of literary-historical considerations. A small amount of linguistic research has also been undertaken in this connection, but its results must be considered preliminary and tentative. The present paper presents the results of a comprehensive examination of the distinctively late linguistic phenomena in Jeremiah as they relate to the dating of the book in general and to that of the exclusively Masoretic material specifically. On the one hand, the theory according to which the latter is attributed to secondary expansion appears convincing. On the other hand, the linguistic similarity between this material and that which comprises the rest of the book—both of which contain a not inconsiderable accumulation of distinctively late linguistic phenomena—outweighs their differences. This similarity, along with the contrast in linguistic profile between this material and the core Late Biblical Hebrew corpus—Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, all of which probably date from after 450 B.C.E.—indicates that the literary expansion whereby the short version of Jeremiah was expended into the long version was undertaken no later than the beginning of the Persian Period.

Our sources for the study of prophecy in the ancient Near East have three primary loci: North Syria in the 18th century (primarily the Mari corpus), Israel, from the 9th century on, and Assyria in the 7th century (time of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal), each with its own particular setting. There are scattered additional sources from Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt (Byblos) that help to fill in the gaps, but significant gaps remain. The earliest corpus suggests a development that took place in North Syria, but the other two constellations of sources cannot be explained by direct continuity, though there are various connecting lines. This paper explores the character of the continuity between the oldest corpus and the two later corpora, especially with regard to the relationship of the Neo-Assyrian corpus with that of Mari. At one time it was argued that the Neo-Assyrian corpus represented something that was alien to the Mesopotamian tradition and was itself actually strongly under the influence of Aramaean traditions centered in North Syria. Many scholars now argue, however, that the Neo-Assyrian corpus reflects an internal development, even if somewhat influenced by North Syria. The Biblical tradition itself places considerable emphasis on connections of early Israel with North Syria. Review of the prophetic titles, behavior, and messages provides a means to examine the issues of continuity.

In recent years, conceptions of the divine world in the ancient Near East (ANE) and the Hebrew Bible have attracted increased attention. In particular, scholars have reexamined the most basic question—what is a god?—in an attempt to better understand the conceptions of the divine world in their own contexts and according to their own terms. As part of an ongoing postdoctoral project on perceptions of deity in the non-Priestly portions of Genesis 12-36, Exodus 1-24 and the ANE, my presentation reassesses conceptions of deity in Genesis 12-26 in light of the ANE material. It will address such issues as divine corporeality (e.g., Gen 18; 32), the nature and function of messengers and their seeming overlap with YHWH (e.g., Gen 16:7-11; 18-19; 22:11, 15-16), and the association of YHWH with inanimate objects (e.g., the pillar in Gen 28). While the Genesis texts generally embrace the ANE fluid presentation of deity, they differ in certain key respects, especially in their presentation of divine messengers.

Presentation of an Ammonite name seal: its analysis, classification and position within the corpus of the so far known Ammonite seals, in special consideration of the relation between image and text on name seals.

Roman historiographers (Tacitus, Suetonius) and administration (Pliny the Younger) presented the early Christianity as superstition. In the philosophical sources the picture is somewhat different. This is visible in Epictetus's , Lucian's and Galen's writings which are the earliest philosophical accounts on Christians. Though their critical or even ridiculing attitude, they relate Christianity and the category of philosophy. This possibly mirrors the Christian self-representation as a philosophy.

The Gospel of Peter describes the Jews as the murderers of Christ. In this paper the negative image of the Jews is examined from three different perspectives. First this phenomenon in the text is analyzed in light of social identity approach. The social identity approach is a socio-psychological theory, which seeks to explain intergroup relations and notably the discrimination of the out-group members. The theories and insights of the social identity approach are used to explain the denigration of the Jews in the Gospel of Peter. Next the point of view is turned from constructing a social identity to the effective means of communicating this constructed identity to the audience. The gospel narrative is studied in terms of a narratio section of an ancient rhetorical text. This study looks at how the author of the Gospel of Peter uses rhetoric to describe the crucial past event – in this case the passion and resurrection of Jesus – to form an image of that event and the Jewish characters involved in it. Finally the connection between the construction of social identity and the use of rhetoric is taken under discussion. Even a cursory examination reveals that in the Gospel of Peter there is a remarkable similarity in the construction of Christian social identity and the use of conventional polemic rhetoric of intergroup disputes. It is suggested that the human intuition and experience have crafted the conventions of polemical rhetoric into a form that effectively influences people’s sense of categorization and self-enhancement that are crucial to the formation of social identity.

Adelphoi is Paul’s favorite relational term in the homologoumena particularly in 1 Corinthians (Banks, 1994; Aasgaard, 2004). In this paper, I propose that Paul’s use of the vocative adelphoi in 1 Cor 11:33 is one of the key elements to Paul’s meal theology in the making in the context of the problematic Lord’s Supper celebration at Corinth. First, I will show the communal values at risk in vv. 17-22 particularly the 'loss' of being adelphoi to one another. Then, I will delve into Paul’s way of restoring communal values at Corinth by giving them a three-fold instruction that consists of the foundational narrative (vv. 23-25), his theologizing based on the foundational narrative (vv. 26-32) and its practical consequences (vv. 33-34). The practical consequences are prefaced by his vocative use of the relational term adelphoi that is imbued with a social and theological meaning that must be affirmed, upheld and nourished at the Lord's Supper. Paul exerts all these efforts to correct the situation in Corinth since the ritual of the Lord’s Supper encapsulates their common symbolic universe in the making.

There are three key areas where the bible reconfigures space, viz. geography, gender-order/(generation = time/status conferral) and gods/people of God. Their total import argues for seeing such reconstructing also as a model for social change in human history. In recent decades, several biblical/archaeological scholars employing social science insights (e.g., J. Neyrey, R. Bauckham, N. T. Wright, B. Witherington III, P. Harland, L. Grabbe, W. Dever, J. Walton, R. Hess, J. D. Schloen, and several essayists in work edited by D. Balch and Carolyn Osiek) have, in different ways, treated these topics or aspects thereof. This study aims to show how the problem of space in the bible—as embodied by geography, gender and gods—touches on issues germane to biblical faith in antiquity; and how the same question now shapes emergent social history, with issues of social change. The study proposes a model of social transformation from how the bible seeks to “resolve” the problem, via a re-signifying discourse. (Cosmic) Geography proper encompasses much of space-discourse in the bible: a public world, yet domestic; a static or fixed world, yet in motion; a boundless world, yet with boundaries/horizons; a world peopled by nations, yet a Diaspora. Gender speaks of a certain “order” (of being and function) among the sexes in the universe: firm, yet flexible; rooted in a patriarchal culture, yet free from its controlling ideology; assigned a social role/space, yet relativized by love. And God encompasses all that is achievable, beyond human ability or ingenuity, in the created world. God is conceived of primarily in terms of his divine intentions for his creation—human and material—amidst forces that seek to thwart their realization. His intentions are realized among the people of God, who function in social-cultural spaces and human institutional contexts with a transforming ethos.

The first sub-project: a study of all the major aspects of the economy in the ancient world, especially the Roman Empire Manumission was one of the most paradoxical and complicated policies in the slavery system of the Roman Empire. On the one hand, it is contradicting apparently for master to release their slaves who have high productivity. Why didn’t those slave masters keep those highly productive slaves for their own use? What were the economic reasons behind it? On the other hand, there were various forms of manumissions in Greco Roman slavery system. Manumission can be exercised in form of ‘Manumissio vindicta’, ‘Manumissio censu’ and ‘Manumissio testamento’ ranging from a formal legal form to informal form of manumission. In addition, freedmen sometimes maintained some compulsory obligation with the former master in form of ‘paramone contracts’. Though numerous historical researches have been done on the topic, none of them can give a comprehensive explanation on why and how the complicated manumission system was run. This paper seeks to use the New Institutional Economics theory to analyze the economic motive behind the complicated manumission policy. It will also try to explain the manumission policy from a contractual point of view and try to see its interaction with other elements in the slavery system, such as ‘peculium’ and the Roman slavery law concerning the Manumission.

The idol-taunt in Is 44:9-20 spells double-trouble to an image-rich Indian Christian mind. This paper explores other possibility of appropriating this difficult text. It is proposed that this idol-polemic can be construed as a prophetic discourse of identity formation and affirmation, especially during a time of crisis – the exile. To do so, a Dalit reading is helpful. A Dalit reading of this passage can help situate the struggle of a prophet who attempted to construct the identities of a ‘defeated’ deity, a dispersed community, and a de-centered prophet. Dalit literature stems from crisis-ridden contexts. It is filled with literary features such as resistance, ridicule, and reversal. These features are means towards constructing the identity of marginalized persons and communities. In similar vein, the idol-taunt in Deutero-Isaiah, when juxtaposed with Dalit literature, reveals these very characteristics of a discourse from the edge. One, through an audacious prophetic re-imagination of God as still the creator and redeemer, the prophet sought to resist the all pervasive presence and persuasive appeal of the empire. Two, ridicule and a dismissive tone fills the entire passage. Three, of the many reversals in the passage, the most spectacular is the way the prophet makes the ancient West Asian discourses of war stand on its head: the victor, not the vanquished, is ashamed! This sympathetic reading of the idol-taunt helps situate the text in its literary provenance and its attempt at constructing and affirming otherwise fragmented identities of a deity, a community, and a prophet. The paper, then, ends with a note that such a sympathetic reading of the text as a prophetic construction needs to be complemented by other reading that underscores it also as a construction of prophecy in later interpretations.

Research into the development of the canons of Scripture for the period of Second Temple Judaism reveals the phenomena of dual canons in operation. This is particularly apparent in the Pharisaic and Enochic traditions, including Jubilees and documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls library. The first shared body of authoritative texts (first Torah) appears to have greater, because prior and shared authority. In practice however, it was the second canon/ Torah, the one unique to the specific community, which identified and defined that community and was determinative of its interpretation and use of the first. Texts of second canon status therefore became the primary basis of inter-community religious polemic. This phenomenon can be most clearly found throughout the development of the texts that were created by communities that accepted the authenticity and authority of the early Enochic texts. A counter polemic may be detected in the language of the New Testament. This paper will then explore the way NT writers identify, develop and deploy their second canon and its implications for their understanding of the relationship between their writings and the Hebrew Scriptures.

The scribal habits that brought about variation between our ancient witnesses range from unintentional scribal errors to intentional exegetical emendations. Another area of scribal activity that has received considerable attention is that of grammatical differences. The Dead Sea Scrolls have provided a wealth of data to add to this research and scholars such as Kutscher, Qimron, and Muraoka have produced valuable analyses of these witnesses. This paper hopes to build upon their work by utilizing the framework developed by Robert Polzin to categorize variations between the so-called biblical scrolls and the Masoretic Text. Polzin identified nineteen linguistic features that separate Early Biblical Hebrew from Late. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of Cave 4, this paper will apply Polzin’s methodology to the Judges and Samuel (b and c) manuscripts found in that cave. The goal of this paper is two-fold, 1) to assess the viability of using Polzin’s methodology to categorize differences between our Hebrew witnesses, and 2) to analyze the linguistic character of four manuscripts from Cave 4 focusing on their diversity and homogeneity. In order to fulfill this goal, this paper will present an analysis of the variations between the Cave 4 manuscripts and the Masoretic Text. This analysis will identify features that Polzin considered to be characteristic of Late Biblical Hebrew. I will then conclude by placing this analysis within the larger linguistic context of these manuscripts (i.e. their orthography and morphology). Identifying and comparing the linguistic character of individual manuscripts from Cave 4 will help to further our understanding of the “library” at Qumran, while also developing our knowledge of the Hebrew language in general.

The heart of Samson Raphael Hirsch’s literary corpus is his great commentary on the Pentateuch. In its heyday the German Jewish communities treated it with the reverence traditionally accorded to Rashi on the Torah and it was always to be found on the desks of both scholars and laypersons. Although the vast literature on Hirsch focuses on his life and his doctrine of Torah im Derech Eretz, much has been written about various aspects of the commentary on the Pentateuch, including Hirsch’s approach to the reasons for the precepts, his etymological method, his attitude toward the modern world, his treatment of the patriarchs’ transgressions, and his method as a translator. In addition to these interests, Hirsch’s commentary on the Pentateuch is marked by a fine and well-developed literary sensitivity that comes to the fore in many places. Not only has this not been studied in detail; it is never even mentioned in the various introductions to and studies of Hirsch. It must be acknowledged that the literary elements of Hirsch’s commentary are heavily outnumbered by what can be defined as derash. Still, the extensive attention to other facets of his personality and exegesis has led to the total neglect of the literary aspects of Hirsch’s commentaries and has overshadowed his aesthetic and literary sensitivity. Thus there seems to be good reason for examining this aspect of his work—and that is the goal of the present lecture. I will focus on four literary phenomena that Hirsch addresses systematically: multiple points of view; the designations applied to biblical characters; the phenomenon of consecutive statements; and word order. At the end of the lecture I will examine whether Hirsh had a methodological awareness of the literary principles and tools he was using, or whether he wrote these interpretations incidentally and spontaneously, with no system.

To date, the standard hypothesis with regards to the calendars is that there is a base, schematic 364-day calendar in the texts and that it is “sectarian.” The implications of J. T. Milik’s work on the “Enoch” calendar of 4Q208-4Q209 has not been integrated in current scholarship on the subject, and indeed the variety of different calendars, schematic lunar and 364-day and 360-day calendars have not been satisfactorily unaccounted for in the present “sectarian” paradigm. Hence, the question is raised: does the Qumran library represent the interests of one evolving group over time, or of several different groups? If a single group, why did it collect and preserve the writings of other groups? If several groups, did then a breakaway community inhabit Qumran? By examining the calendars, new light may be cast on an old conundrum. I shall argue that once we have included the broad range of calendars into a theoretical construct, the consensus theory of a schism involving the calendar should be reconsidered. A theoretical paradigm based on heterogeneity may emerge, that is, that it was the norm in Judean culture as it was in the wider society, that different calendars were used for different purposes. This theory would not exclude the possibility that one group was responsible for the collection. This hypothesis could replace S. Talmon’s postulation that there was a calendar schism involving the use of different calendars between opposing Second Temple groups, and S. Stern’s theory of calendrical plurality (each group co-existing with either its own a schematic 364-day or lunar calendar). Logically, both of these hypotheses implicitly have a problem with the possibility that one group compiled such a broad calendrical corpus.

The paper discusses affinities between the biblical book in its Septuagint guise and the concerns and phrasings of the Athenian dramatists. Declamations on the instability of human life and the fragility of human happiness are the very stuff of tragedy, of course, so it is no surprise that the view of life taken by Ecclesiastes and something of his vocabulary should also be seen in these classic Greek works. Even so, it is also worthy of note that various specific observations of the sage of Jerusalem, such as “better not to have been born than to have been born” and “woman is more cruel than death,” are frequently uttered by characters in the tragedies. And it can also be noted that the keynote expression of Ecclesiastes, “vanity of vanities,” has a certain affinity with such expressions as “woe upon woe” and “tears upon tears,” frequent in the plays of Euripides, as well as Sophocles’ constructions for “villain of villains” (the vilest of the vile) and “horrible of horribles” (the most horrid situation). All in all, Ecclesiastes seems very much at home in the company of the Greek tragedians.

This paper will examine the reception of the story of the encounter of Saul with the woman of Endor as recounted by 1 Samuel 28:3-25 in Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen’s Saul and the Witch of Endor (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam). This sixteenth century painting is a turning point in the visual representations of that story: the painting will be analysed in the literary and visual contexts of its time, taking into account the rise of interest in witchcraft in Europe. It will be shown that the painting is a visual construction of witchcraft, a model which will be greatly influential in biblical illustrations and specifically in Luther’s Bible.

For several decades the debate over whether the text of the Epistle to Diognetus is in fact a single, unified work or, instead, the compilation of two independent sources has raged among scholars of the early patristic period. Among the various factors that have been culled into this debate have been the question of the fragmented nature of the manuscript tradition and the manner by which the author(s) has/have made use of scripture. Excellent arguments, if not ultimately decisive, have been offered both on behalf of the position for unity and on behalf of the argument for diversity. The current paper seeks to advance this debate further along two separate avenues. In the first instance, the paper identifies two separate hermeneutical approaches to use of scripture within the Epistle arising with a loosely-organized approach to Pauline theology and thought within chapters 1-9 and a significantly more structured focus around Johannine themes in chapters 10-12. Secondly, the paper turns to the matter of ritual texts that appear throughout the work, indicating what may be implied by the presence of such traditions for any understanding of the tradition history behind the text. Ultimately, it is the position of the paper that, while the manuscript tradition as it currently is known by scholars represents the compilation of more than one document, that process was early codified as a unified community tradition as is indicated by the work’s ritual passages.

If the Qumran movement consisted of multiple communities, as has now often been assumed, this has implications on our interpretation of the evidence concerning communal gatherings. Much of the evidence that has been interpreted to speak about one single community at Qumran (especially in the Community Rule) can now be read to speak about multiple groups gathering. It is possible to interpret that frequent small-group gatherings were the norm in the movement. Yet, some of the rules speak, or may be adapted to speak, about larger and infrequent gatherings, especially on an annual basis. This paper sets to analyse this evidence in the rule documents in new light. I will suggest that an organizational and a functional readings of the evidence make a difference. I will also ask whether the Damascus Document and the Community Rule differ on this issue and what conclusions we should draw from this for the idem identity (sameness) in the movement over time.

The wife of Joseph, Aseneth (Gen 41:45), is the protagonist of a romantic novel from Hellenistic times, Joseph and Aseneth. As Angela Standhartinger underlines, the Aseneth of the shorter version of this romance is an assertive, independent, adventurous, and authoritative female character. According to gender stereotypes, this Aseneth takes on the supposedly masculine character of the biblical Patriarch Joseph, while Joseph in the same story is left to resemble a background character of a romance. A less investigated theme is the aspect of the gender of the biblical image of Joseph with which this Hellenistic story operates. This paper will show that this post-biblical tale could construct the icon of Aseneth as a powerful diviner and spiritual expert without reversing the gender of a Hellenistic scientist. I argue that the shorter version of Joseph and Aseneth builds on a view of Joseph as spiritual Human in whose image of pious teacher are united both male and female genders. Careful narrative analysis of the tale uncovers that the scientific icon of Joseph in communication with the divine in fact restores the spiritual teacher Aseneth. It is the patriarchal environment that instigates the absorption of Aseneth into Joseph’s personality. This new image is cushioned in the persona of an influential male diviner that lends to both genders access to the esoteric world and the control of supernatural powers. Thus, Joseph emulates Aseneth who, by divine grace, is able to see a new image in the reflection from the water in a cup. The biblical cup incident could be seen as set at the culmination of the Joseph Story (Gen 37-50) in order to symbolize the outset of the spirituality of the nation of Ancient Israel (Gen 44:5, 15).

In their efforts to categorise and describe the texts from Qumran, scholars often use at least two different sets of adjectives: (1) “Biblical,” “non-biblical,” “parabiblical,” “reworked” (Bible), “apocryphal,” “pseudepigraphical,” etc. (2) “Sectarian,” “pre-sectarian,” “non-sectarian,” “extra-sectarian,” etc. While the labels in the first set are broad and general, those in the second are narrower. And the two groups of adjectives provide fundamentally different information about the texts: Group 1 provides canonical (and anachronistic) categories, while Group 2 indicates texts’ origin in relation to the Yachad. The former focuses on texts’ subsequent “canonical destiny”, the latter on milieu of origin. However, despite these and other differences, most of the adjectives tend to be used as if they were part of the same game – a game in which a complex category like “scriptural” sometimes plays a role as well. The question of the character of the collection in Qumran is closely related to how it is described. It is easy to create both homogeneity and diversity simply by the way we describe the material. On the one hand, the canonical categories (cf. Group 1) introduce tensions, borders and dualisms among texts that were found side-by-side in the Qumran caves. They also tend to mask the complexity existing among the texts characterised by grand labels such as “biblical,” “apocryphal” and “pseudepigraphical.” On the other hand, the “sectarian” categories (cf. Group 2) contribute to isolating the Qumran material from other groups of texts. In my paper I will address the need for a whole range of different, internally coherent systems for describing and categorising the textual material from Qumran in order to serve different needs and purposes. I will also present different ways of describing the Qumran texts based on different parameters and purposes.

The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 has inspired a wealth of homiletic, interpretive, and literary responses in various languages and traditions. This paper will examine a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel that is full of imagined dialogues, speeches, and prayers. This Greek text, Sermo de Cain, et de Abel caedo, comes from an uncertain period (perhaps mid-fifth century) and from an uncertain author, Ephrem Graecus. While it is generally agreed that texts that go under the name Ephrem Graecus, with a few exceptions, are not connected to the works of Ephrem the Syrian, there is little else known about these texts. Ephrem Graecus’ text on Cain and Abel remains relatively unknown, although it is discussed in scholarship on Cain and Abel (notably Glenthøj 1997) and a modern edition now exists (Phrantzolas 1998). This paper will focus on two features of Ephrem Graecus’ retelling. First, the paper will explore the use of imagined speeches, in particular the long lament given by Eve at the conclusion of the text. Her speech provides an interesting case study of how imagined speeches expand upon the Biblical narrative and provide insights into what otherwise silent characters might have been thinking. Eve’s lament, while dwelling on the meaning of death and the expulsion from paradise, at the same time sounds like something out of Greek tragedy or the rhetorical schoolroom. This paper will also consider whether this text is in verse or in prose—or perhaps in rhythmic prose. Many of the texts of Ephrem Graecus appear to be in verse, though in a style unlike anything else in the Greek tradition as it is based neither on quantity nor stress accent but the number of syllables, as in Syriac.

The image of Elijah's chariot is a constantly recurring and very popular motif in Eastern Orthodox iconography, and this image is also associated with a group of literary motifs in East European folklore. The present paper attempts to outline the biblical background of this iconographic motif, to demonstrate which texts are relevant in interpreting this image and the literary motifs related to it. It is also important to clarify whether there is such an ancient Near Eastern iconographical context in which these biblical patterns can plausibly be construed. Given his highly legendary characteristics and his special relationship with Elohim/YHWH, Elijah's figure and the related motifs may have some connection with the characteritic features of the deity whose prophet he is.

The story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in Genesis is remembered in a variety of contexts and given a whole range of meanings in Jewish and Christian texts. This paper will encounter some of these texts (the Jewish historians, Church fathers and rabbinic interpreters), looking in particular at the character of Hagar. Although the Biblical figure of Hagar has merely a marginal position in the collective memory of the West, she has become a traveling concept that recently also has moved out of the Biblical and religious discourses and been given new meanings: Hagar has become a symbol for African American womanhood, she is remembered within Israeli peace movements and scholarship, while in Islam she is a pioneering woman who plays a role in history and ritualization. Muslim feminists in USA can even talk about Hagar as a historical model for gender jihad. Both African and Nordic scholars use Hagar to construct Christian contextual theology. In interreligious dialogues the character of Hagar may also play a role as the various stories about her in the three traditions generate reflections on faith, ritual, and gender justice. The memory of Hagar highlights the multiple possibilities embedded in most social settings, while at the same time reflecting the overriding impact of power and hierarchy.

Are houses the everyday space, or more specifically, the ordinary whereabouts of women in the Old Testament? And is the house in Ancient Israel, as it is depicted in the Old Testament, a typical „woman’s space“? These questions are going to be traced by means of conclusions made in the modern theories concerning space in human geography and gender geography, respectively. These conclusions will be applied to Old Testament texts in which women and houses are closely related. In the last twenty years gender geography centered heavily on the connection between gender and space. Thus space has become more and more an essential element of the description of a society’s social life. One focus also lies on the classification of women’s everyday life in categories such as the public and the private. The question here is if such modern-day categories can be applied directly to Old Testament texts and everyday life in Ancient Israel.

The topic of this paper deals with the way in which Byzantine art "treated" the animals mentioned primarily in the Bible. It is well known that animal imagery occupies a significant position in Byzantine iconography since the paleochristian period. We will focus on examining the iconographic context in which animals are found in order to detect whether they served as vehicles of special religious meaning or they were simple elements of narration.

I will treat the following questions by discussing the scarce Biblical and (somewhat richer) Mesopotamian sources: 1.What experience is behind the cross-cultural formulation «to be born as lillu / kesîl / apaideutos / fatuus»? What kind of disabilities could be observed as soon as a child was born? Was a knowledge in antiquity that a visible physical deformity can be connected with a mental retardation (e.g. Down syndrome; cretinism)? And was there a knowledge that other mental retardations which are observable only after years, are congenital? On the other hand, medical ignorance about treating a deaf-mute child could accompany a (primary or secondary) mental retardation. 2.The scarcity of sources leads to the question how much attention was paid to a deficit of intelligence. Societies designate a handicap as «disability» when they cannot or will not integrate it. How could a mentally handicapped child be integrated in the family of a peasant – or in the family of a scribe? There are some sources about both kinds of family. And additional informations come from the cross-cultural study of the personal names. 3.A cross-cultural study of the vocabulary demonstrates: The term «fool» could stand either for a congenitally deficient person or for an intelligent person who acts only temporarily as a fool. The use of the identical designations has consequences for the rating of mental retardation. 4.The Hebrew word petî (translated by the Septuagint: nepios, akakos or aphron) can designate a naive or a childish person. It is noticeable that the Old Testament does not blame the petî, even though his deficits are mentioned clearly. Were mentally retarded persons judged as long-life children? Some Hebrew and Greek texts can be interpreted in this direction.

The Eucharist in the Didache presents a number of challenges for the scholars of early Christianity who often describe it as ‘enigma’, ‘mystery’ or ‘riddle’. This contribution seeks to shed light on various puzzling elements of the Eucharistic passages of the Didache (chapters 9-10 and 14; cf. chapter 16) by interpreting them against the backdrop of Jewish restoration theology(ies) of the Second Temple period. It will seek, in particular, to identify and explore some of the most important Jewish restoration motifs in the Didache. Beginning with the expression ‘(the) gathering (of the dispersed) into one’ (9:4; cf. 10:5), which clearly echoes the idea of Israel’s restoration found in the Hebrew Bible and the literature of the Second Temple period, this study will also examine several other expressions, including the ‘holy branch of David’ (9:2) and the ‘House/God of David’ (10:6). In this way it will show that the context and the content of the Eucharistic passages of the Didache may best be understood in light of Jewish restoration eschatology(ies) of the time.

The movie, “The Devil Inside” (2012), which is in the style of a documentary film, represents a modernist take on the biblical stories of demon possession. However, the film portrays dependence on the biblical portrayal of demon-possession. For example, just as demons from Matthew 8:28-34 exhibited violence in the two men that they possessed, the demon-possessed Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) exhibits superhuman strength in throwing physically large priest. Furthermore, the demons which possessed Maria Rossi were transferred to people involved in exorcizing her, and this exhibits dependence on Matthew 8:32, which showed that demons can be transferred from the demon-possessed to pigs. In this paper, I will identify points in the film that exhibit dependence of the biblical textual attestations of demon-possession. Also, I will explain why these dependences are significant in helping us to understand modern Hollywood and, by extension, modern American perception of the Bible.

This study aims to show that Isa. 46:1-2 demonstrates a case of shared hermeneutics with the Marduk Ordeal text, as well as presupposes a good knowledge on the Babylonian Akitu festival. The Marduk Ordeal text is an Assyrian propagandistic text composed in the milieu of Sennacherib’s religious reform in the Assyrian empire against the Babylonian pantheon. It is characterized by its novel re-interpretation of existing Babylonian divinities and the Akitu festival. The Marduk Ordeal text and Second-Isaiah share a similar anti-Babylonian sentiment and this Assyrian propagandistic text, written more than a century before Second-Isaiah’s time provided a hermeneutical key for his creative transformation of an earlier Israelite tradition, which the prophet was well aware of. He was able to use this taunting interpretation of the Babylonian Akitu festival for the purpose of discouraging his fellow Judahite exiles from worshiping Babylonian gods, represented by Marduk and Nabû, a role intended, inter alia, to also be played by the Marduk Ordeal text: dissuading Assyrians from worshipping the Babylonian gods. I will first present the basic interpretation of the Marduk Ordeal text, many details of which have not been clarified yet and then look at the Second-Isaiah passage in its own right. After that, the implication of the fact that those two texts share hermeneutic on the interpretation of the Second-Isaiah passage, as well as on the redaction of the passage in the wider context will be discussed.

Among the most important criteria of the ability to be a “real man” in the modern Western world is the virtue of not betraying one’s feelings and never crying. In the Hebrew Bible, however, we find a most different picture. There, many male characters, of different social status, openly shed lush tears in public. Yet, this in no way contradicts their inherent ability to embody the ancient Israelite concept of masculinity. On the contrary: the tears and wails of grief express paramount aspects of biblical masculinity. The paper is endeavouring to find an answer to this riddle, which actualy is enigmatic for modern readers only. The topic opens with a moment from king David’s story, followed by other examples from the Deuteronomistic History as well as from Genesis and Exodus.

'History of (early/ancient/biblical) Israel' stands a chance to remain on the curriculum of top universities if the discipline is (re)structured as a social science. The academic standing of the 'humanities' might not survive the collective suicide of this scholarly field universally known as 'post-modernism'.

The book of Joshua contains nine chapters of dense geographical details interspersed with occasional vignettes focusing on a few individuals or groups. Many readers have found this material to be tedious and unimaginative, while others have been attracted to the particulars of topography, landmarks, and boundary lines. Questions of dating and authorship persist through the various studies. An untested field of inquiry, however, lies in the meanings and values attached to the spaces that Joshua assigns to the various recipients. Are certain areas of more historic significance than others, e.g. due to religious or ethnic traditions? Does the productiveness of one region over another correspond to a sense of superiority or inferiority of its residents? Do settlement and urbanization patterns lend status to a region? Regionalisms of these and other types are well known from many cultures and can be expected during antiquity in the Southern Levant as well. The supposedly straightforward account of Joshua’s assigning land to the respective tribes may thus actually conceal divisions and stereotypes among the people as they came to terms with their respective environmental contexts. The text legitimates these differences by portraying Joshua with patron-like power to grant land to the people, thus in effect determining their orientation to their respective environments, their neighbors, and their histories.

In this paper the healing of the blind man in John 9 will be examined from a socio-scientific perspective. The healing act of Jesus will be discussed against the background of temple oriented Judaism and its view of blindness and the connection to sin. The difference between the curing of a disease and the healing of an illness in cultural/anthropological perspective will help to unlock the double meaning of the narrative in John and how it functions rhetorically as a semeia, apotreptically influencing the reader to a confession of faith and loyalty to the Jesus/Johannine group, and in that way breaking the ground for an experience of and participation in "spiritual healing/restoration" in the Johannine sense of the word (cf John 9:40-41; 12:40vv).

In my paper I intend to explore intertextual allusions and echoes on two cultural and social topics in the book of Ecclesiastes: toil and friendship. Qohelet represented an important part of the Israelite wisdom tradition, but also a part of the wider wisdom literature of the Ancient Near East. The wide range of materials of this corpus in the Antiquity shared topics, areas of interest, even answers to vital questions of the ancient as well as the modern mind. The intended author of the book deals with many topics often found also in the wisdom literature of other cultures in the Circum Mediterranean. Some of these topics include, for instance, friendship, wealth, work, authorities, death and the social status of old people, just to mention a few. In my paper I intend to examine one topic of cultural intertexture, namely the view of work and toil, as well as one of the social topics – friendship - and its intertexture. My approach in the exploration of these portions of Qohelet’s cultural and social intertexture will focus firstly on the text to be interpreted, particular passages of the Book of Ecclesiastes depicting events or expressing ideas concerning these cultural and social topics. Secondly, I will point to signs possibly matrixed with other sets of signs present in the context of the wisdom literature, the wider context of the Hebrew Bible, and finally in the context of the ancient Near East, using a synchronic approach, i.e. looking at the texts at the same time, not considering their development and antecedents.

An interesting feature of some New Testament texts is, if not the silence, at least the reservation when the writers speak of Satan. For example Satan is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark and sometimes in the genuine letters of Paul, but neither of these authors emphasizes his role or presents it in detail. However, both of them apparently had a clear view on the topic. My contribution seeks reasons for this cautiousness asking how able the Gentile part of their audience was to understand the Jewish concepts of the personal evil.

In London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is a small gold-framed painting. This painting was titled "The Dismissal of Hagar" in all public records from the 1740s until 1970. In 1970, under the guidance of the eminent Rembrandt scholar Christian Tümpel, the painting was retitled "The Departure of the Shunammite Woman". Current research challenges this reappropriation for conservational, theological, and iconographic reasons. A physical conservational assessment of the painting provided clues of post-original tampering. A reexamination of the five possible relevant biblical texts yields no perfect iconographic match. The closest match is Genesis 21’s abjection of Hagar and Ishmael, if one ignores the presence of a ridden donkey and the opulent costuming of the female character. The interpretive keys to Rembrandt’s innovative hermeneutic of the text are rooted in the interfaith milieu of Amsterdam in the 1600s. The presence of Protestant (Calvinist and Mennonite), Sephardic Jewish, and Roman Catholic theologians in residence provided Rembrandt with potential narrative options beyond the traditional interpretation of the cruel abandonment of Hagar and Abraham’s first born child Ishmael by Sarah, Abraham, and God. Northern European seventeenth century biblical scholars, both Christian and Jewish, were deeply influenced by the midrashim of medieval Spanish rabbis who deliberated over “Father Abraham’s” ability to commit such malice and sought interpretive avenues to mitigate Abraham’s ethically questionable conduct. These creative solutions to an ethical dilemma provide enough circumstantial evidence to support the original designation of the painting as depicting Hagar. Due in part to this research, the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010 reassigned the painting’s title back to the original.

The cult of the sky god Anu at Uruk developed under Achaemenid rule and flourished during the Seleucid period. Although Anu had always resided in Uruk and enjoyed a certain degree of worship throughout the millennia, it was only during the final stages of Babylonian history that he rose to such prominence as to replace Ištar as Uruk's patron deity. Literary and administrative sources from that period demonstrate that the priests of Anu made a conscious effort to connect the new cult to what they considered venerable religious traditions. They composed scholarly texts which suggested that the temples, their rituals and personnel went back to antediluvian times, they adopted millennia-old ceremonial names for the new sanctuaries and included obscure, forgotten deities into the cycles of regular worship. Another aspect of that ‘antiquarian theology’ is the appearance in the ritual texts of the lú.mah/lumahhu, a high-ranking type of cultic official primarily active during the late third and early second millennium.

Protestant Christianity entered Japan in several ways giving rise to several different styles. This phenomenon is a double-edged sword, as it is precisely this characteristic which allowed Protestantism to develop in the first place, but it is also a divisive characteristic as it allows any group to split off and form its own style of Christianity. Consequently, the founder of the Non-church Movement, Uchimura Kanzo, was able to make the assertion that as there are other kinds of Christianity, there should also be “Japanese Christianity.” Indigenization of Christianity in Japan has been extensively researched by Mark Mullins and the changes that Christianity underwent are well-documented. On the flip side of that research, however, is the question of how Christianity changed the people in Japan who became Christians. This process of “Christianization” included not only Christian faith and beliefs, but also Western values. The process manifested itself, at times, in strange and unusual ways in their Japanese identities and lifestyles. By briefly looking at some profiles of Christians in Japan; both modern and historical, I would like examine how far this process extended into their lives to see if they are Japanese Christians or Christian Japanese.

Threshing floors belong in the country. They are associated with abundance, judgement, since there the wheat is sorted from the chaff, and rituals of mourning. Narratives concerning threshing floors are characterized by the uncanny juxtaposition of life and death. Two narratives correlate threshing floors to the paradigmatic cities of Jerusalem and Samaria. Threshing floors in or contiguous with cities suggest the interdependence of city and country, but also a site for ritual display and enactment. Both threshing floors are scenes of theophany and deception. The temple in Jerusalem is founded on the threshing floor of Arawnah the Jebusite, and on the memory of the pact between the two cultures and their respective monarchs. The threshing floor by the gate of Samaria is both liminal space and ritual theatre. The dramatic performance of the prophets before their royal audience conceals the deliberations of the divine council and the fatality that drives Ahab to his doom, despite YHWH’s promise in the previous chapter. The temple of Jerusalem commemorates the point at which the plague stopped. In both cases, the deity tempts the king, but with opposite results. I intend to examine these narratives using Catherine Bell’s theory of ritual space, as a space that enables metaphorical reflection on the narrative as a whole, in other words functions as metanarrative, and which permits the crossing of boundaries, in particular between the living and the dead.

In the last decades the reestablishment of the Temple library by Judah Maccabee was viewed as one of the key events leading to the establishment of the canon of the Hebrew Bible and its proto-Masoretic standard text. The presence of manuscripts of almost all books of the Hebrew Bible in the eleven caves from Qumran was taken as corroborative evidence for this idea. The Jerusalem Temple library and the manuscript finds from Qumran can only be properly understood in the overall contexts of the history of ancient libraries and archives. A comparison with of the temple library and the Qumran collection will point to the influence ancient libraries exerted on the development of ancient canones and textual standardization. But the same comparison will also ask for caution in viewing the establishment of the Jerusalem temple library as the decisive event which led to the conclusion of Hebrew canon and the development of its proto-Masoretic standard text.

One consistent metaphor in Micah, which presents a coherent poetic feature and has not yet been emphasized in previous scholarship, is that of birthing imagery. I intend to use the metaphor of Zion giving birth in 4:9 as a key to draw out and uncover variations of birth and sexual imagery throughout the book. For this paper, I will focus on the birthing imagery in Micah 1 and allude to further variations of birthing imagery throughout that unify the book. Through the use of conceptual metaphor theory, I will analyze how various linguistic patterns throughout Micah participate in the birthing metaphor and form a coherent theme of fertility/infertility. The process of metaphor names the use of a concrete concept to demonstrate an abstract concept. The abstract concept in Micah is war—victory versus defeat—and this is demonstrated through the concrete concept of birth. In birth, the body of a woman is used to signify not only strength and power, but also vulnerability and annihilation. In addressing the conceptual metaphor of birth, I will also consider why and how a woman’s body can serve as a conceptual metaphor both for victory and defeat.

How can we asses the cultural value of a literary work? What are the right criteria for that? Can we consider the prices of books, as listed in book lists from the Cairo Genizah as a faithful representative of the minor importance of the Tanhuma in comparison to the Talmud? The findings of the Cairo Genizah enable us to portray the reception of a literary work from various angles. In this lecture I will present an intermediary summary on the reception of the genre of Tanhuma-Yelamdenu, as seen from a gradually growing corpus of documents catalogued and analyzed in the Grandchamp project on the reception of Haggadic Midrash in the University of Haifa. Our findings so far seem to mark the Tanhuma as a central Haggadic work. The centrality of the work is evident not only in the relatively abundance of fragments, editions, and references in book lists. Our finding points to a relatively intensive use of the Tanhuma in public contexts, and the presence of Tanhuma-Yelamdenu traditions and literary conventions in late homilies, sermons and commentaries. As such they show that the influence of a literary corpus should be measured by criteria that are beyond external aspects that mark the importance of a text. The importance of the text lays in the way i t shaped cultural standards, collective knowledge, literary tastes and conventions of its audience.

Early Jewish literature (Pseudo-Philo, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Ex., Num. and Deut., cf. Sifre N., Num. R., Pirqe de R. Eliezer, Yalqut Shim'oni) evidences the equation of Phinehas (levitical priest from the Num 25 narrative) and Elijah (prophet of Israel during the reign of Ahab 1 Kgs 17 -- 2 Kgs 2). Most authors speculate that this tradition originated in either Targum Pseudo-Jonathan or Pseudo-Philo. In his article "Einige Bemerkungen zu M.F. Collins, 'The Hidden Vessels in Samaritan Tradition'", Alexander Zeron makes a tentative argument that the Phinehas-Elijah tradition might have originated in Malachi or at least was received as such in Pseudo-Philo. I will argue that Malachi intentionally combines the figures of Phinehas and Elijah in Malachi 2.4-7, the description of the ‘ideal Levite’, through allusions to Num 25.12-13 and 1 Kgs 17.24. These observations strengthen Zeron’s tentative argument, affirming Malachi as the source of the tradition. I will also argue that later Jewish authors recognized this ideology in Malachi and through allusions to the text of Malachi, appropriated and developed the Phinehas-Elijah ideology in their own works.

Indigenous communities would have great difficulties identifying themselves with the priestly editors of the Book of Numbers who advocated an iconoclastic and genocidal attitude towards the people of the land. In the case of China, the experience of the bitter conflicts between the new Chinese Christian converts and the so-called idolatrous Chinese people during the missionary era, bears ardent testimonies to the inevitable religious and cultural clashes brought about by the iconoclastic stipulation embodied in biblical passages such as in Numbers 33:50-56. Prohibition against idolatry has been viewed by scholars as late editorial addition to the book, which represents both the historical reflections of Israel in the exilic community in their quest for religious and political identity, and the future portrayal of a renewed people in the Promised Land. This paper intends to read Num 33 in the context of religious and political schism between communities as seen in the cases of the return of Israelites from the Exile and the missionary conversion of the Chinese to the Christian faith. As a result of conversion of the Chinese, enormous religious and cultural polemics between communities have been accentuated. That the Israelites are commanded by God to destroy all religious practices of the Canaanite inhabitants at the end of their wilderness journey, as the new generation of Israel was on the edge of the land of Canaan, will be examined critically in parallel with similar passages in Lev 26 and Ps.106 and re-appropriated cross-textually with the iconoclastic movement of the politically-oriented Taiping Christianity in China (1850-1864).

In this paper I attempt to investigate Israel’s identity as presented in Ezekiel 20 from the lens of ethnicity in social science. First, I present the social scientific viewpoint that ethnicity is socially constructed, subjectively perceived and connected to a common myth of ancestry. On the one hand, this definition follows Weber’s stress on common descent as the essential element in a perceived ethnic identity. On the other hand, it disagrees with Weber who sees ethnic identity as based on indicia such as physical type or customs. Rather, after surveying both primordialist and situationalist models of ethnicity, I see some benefit of the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth’s model in explaning the dynamic and relational nature of ethnic identity. Second, I employ the above definition of ethnicity as a heuristic tool to investigate the identity of Israel in Ezekiel 20, which, I argue, also stresses the common ancestry as important in differentiating Israel from the goyyim (nations). Phenotypical distinctions are absent in this chapter, whereas cultural elements such as ordinances, statutes and Sabbaths, land and oath, common experience of exile are highlighted as ethnic indicia that are actively constructed during the interactions with other goyyim. Barth’s situationalist model thus works to a certain extent in explaining this dynamic aspect of Israelite identity in relation to the nations. Still, I argue that the situationalist model proposed by Barth is ultimately insufficient to define Israel’s ethnic identity due to the lack of attention to the power outside of human agency. In Ezekiel 20, the force that forms and shapes Israel’s ethnic identity is ultimately attributed to the creative, dynamic yet totalitarian sovereignty of Yahweh. In light of the ethnic study in social science, the history of Ezekiel 20 could be read in such a way that Israel’s existence is totally dependent on Yahweh.

In former scholarship the late midrashic traditions were perceived as an afterglow of their precursors in the golden times of the classic midrashim. Thus they were presented as governed by primarily anthological interest in as well as eclectic and narrative usage of older rabbinic traditions of all sort. While these observations hold true for parts of those midrashic texts, one also has to consider strategies of literary transmission, adaptation, and innovation in order to grasp their transformative function as link between late antique and early medieval times. I would like to study such developments in late Midrash with a special focus on the texts of Seder Eliyahu Rabba (SER) and Zuta (SEZ). Both multifarious works, probably to be dated in early geonic times, are mainly concerned with questions of ethical lifestyle and righteous conduct. With literary skilfulness this tradition combines different genres, literary structures and strategies which could have make the text function for different audiences. The text integrates ethical and religious concepts with a complex discourses on Jewish or rabbinic identity and culture, against the backdrop of an emerging rabbinic Judaism within a context of Karaite, Roman-Byzantine, Christian, Persian and Islamic influences. The paper will address examples of Seder Eliyahu’s complex interaction with and modification of biblical and rabbinic traditions, hermeneutics and rhetoric in order to convey particular messages or pursue specific goals. How were literary structures and genres as well as hermeneutic and exegetical methods adopted and adapted to the thematic frame of the text? The answer to these questions will help to raise our awareness of the similarities and differences regarding other rabbinic discourses (e.g. Mishnah, Talmud, Midrashim) and to allocate Seder Eliyahu within the framework of ancient Jewish literature.

Martyrdom has been counted among the chief reasons why the belief in the resurrection of the flesh became to have such a prominent place in early Christian teaching. Scholars have argued that the voluntary suffering and death of the martyrs provide the context for the belief that the same body that has been tortured and mutilated will be raised as recompense and a sign of ultimate victory over death. However, early Christian martyrologies hardly ever mention the resurrection of the flesh. On the contrary, the salvation of the martyr is typically described as an ascent of the soul to heaven at the moment of the martyr’s death. Moreover, knowledge of the historical circumstances of martyrdom is scarce. Surely, there were Christians who lost their life because of their faith. But the narratives of martyrs are legendary accounts whose value is not in their historical accuracy. They show that the experience of being persecuted was an intrinsic part of the early Christian self-image but it is hard to evaluate, for example, how frequently Christians saw martyred bodies. In this paper, I will analyze several reports of martyrdom both, from the point-of-view of the resurrection of the flesh and as descriptions of an immediate ascent.

Paper examines artifacts recently discovered in the region of Tyre.

Back in my dissertation from 1985, Early Israel, I presented the following maxim: Our most important duty is to acknowledge our ignorance. The concept of "ancient Israel" was invented in modern (well, perhaps not so modern after all) scholarship as a way to organize everything these scholars believed to know about ancient Palestinian society and its history. It was and still is a construct put together by scholars in order to escape the fact that so little is known about Palestine (alias the geographical landscape called Palestine in Christian tradition until the end of the British Mandate). Almost 25 years ago, Philip R. Davies defined "ancient Israel" as the way historical information from the ancient Levant was blended with biblical stories about Israel into the concept of ancient Israel, something that only existed in the mind of biblical scholars. This reminds us of Plato's talk about human memory as a soft tablet of clay to be inscribed. We might substitute his clay tablet with a "soft disc." But the essential is that once constructed, the concept of "ancient Israel" has served as the soft disc / tablet of clay on which to inscribe all information--mythical, historical, whatever--from the ancient world after which it was blended with biblical information. In a more narrow memory discussion, it may be said that ancient Israel is something "memorized." It is sometimes said that ancient Israel remembered something. As a matter of fact, in this way a memory created by modern scholarship becomes the subject that remembers, and in this way the scholars simply assume that they know far more than they are indeed able to know.

Many scholars have identified the Second Temple of Jerusalem as a central element of the second book of the Maccabbees. This space, plundered and profaned during forced hellenization, can also be a representation of everything that needs saving. In fact, as soon as the house of God underwent what many have associated with the desolation of abomination, another space was under threat: the martyr’s body. Within the seventh chapter of the book, the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons is exposed. If, using correlative thought, the dismemberment of their limbs is like plundering, and the suffering of their bodies is like profanation, does their conviction of physical resurrection after death express a belief that the temple will be restored or that another temple will substitute the sanctuary? Does the temple’s violation and martyrdom manifest similar symbolism? Is it possible that through violence one is profaned and the other is purified? What links can be made between the temple and the body, two important sites of the presence of God’s manifestation and of the Jewish people’s identity? The present paper is an attempt to think about this resurrected body as a potential solution or answer to the possible extermination of the people and the destruction of their Second Temple. The works of Berquist, Douglas, Mirguet and Dhorme will help us inform that behind the material world, the focus on fundamental spaces for Jewish identity in this Second Temple piece of literature reveals a new imaginary territory. Firstly, I will focus on the Temple itself and its representation in this time of confrontation that implies the reaffirmation and redefinition of fundamental cultural elements for Judeans. Secondly, I will present the body – martyrised and resurrected – as a second temple where the divine manifests itself long before Christ.

The Book of Judges, especially chapters 4 and 5, remains a seminal Biblical text for investigating the pervasive cultural taboo of women’s violence. In this paper, I intend to analyze the murder of Sisera, general of the Canaanite army, by Yael, a nomadic woman using a tent peg as weapon. This episode of murderous intimacy is told twice as a narrative in Judg 4,17-22 and as a poem in Judg 5,25-27. The question underlying my paper regards the labeling of Yael as either “a feminist” heroine acting radically subversive or as a woman comforting the heterosexist norm in the context where this murder strongly suggests a war rape. To enlighten adequately Yael, I intend to keep open the tension between these two exegetical possibilities. First, I will demonstrate how subversion is enacted in this murder episode, using Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, especially her idea of “dissonant juxtaposition” of genders (1999, p. 156-157), in order to understand Yael’s vacillation between masculinity and femininity during the murder. Second, I will consider the limited impact of this subversive gender performance since Yael is also the object of a stereotyped othering as a woman, a non-Israelite and a murderess. To demonstrate this othering, I will explore how the representation of Yael is sexualized in different ways both in the poem and in the narrative. The last part will address how the ending of each murder episode can be understood as a heterosexist scene: Baraq, being the focalizer, looks at the murdered body of the general, this last scene suggesting rape and fellatio and the feminization of a man (Judg 4,22) ; the mother of Sisera and her advisers comfort themselves thinking Sisera is delayed by the collecting of women as part of his booty (Judg 5, 28-30).

(This belongs to the first sub-project) The notion of “subsistence” has been employed intensively by Justin Meggitt, Steven Friesen and Bruce Longenecker in their recent studies on poverty and the economic scale in the Roman Empire. However, the expressions “living close to subsistence level”, “living at subsistence level” and “living below subsistence level” in their considerations are ambiguous and not helpful for describing the living standards of the poorest sections in antiquity. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the meaning of subsistence standard with the analysis of the economist Mohammed Sharif, and applied it to the context of Graeco-Roman society. Sharif suggests that subsistence is a desirable standard of living which indicates a social prescription for the poor that ensures their productive efficiency. In other words, subsistence is not equivalent to the state of having just enough resources to stay alive, i.e. meeting the survival standard. Rather, it reflects a minimum decent living standard for the poor to have an efficient productivity acceptable to the society. I will firstly estimate the survival standard and the subsistence standard for a typical adult male in antiquity in terms of food-energy (kcal). Then I will show that in Graeco-Roman society, the social prescription for those who could not support themselves can be observed in the grain distribution for some privilege citizens in Rome, the alimentary allowance for the children in need, and the expected rations and provisions for manual labourers, slaves and soldiers. Finally, I will compare the results and show that the amounts of various social provisions aim at meeting the subsistence standard of living, either for an individual (i.e. a child, a slave or a soldier) or a certain number of household members (e.g. grain distribution).

Scholars have argued correctly that in 1 Cor 12:4-6 Paul stresses the common divine source of the various spiritual gifts in order to correct the Corinthian self-centered and status-seeking understanding of the spiritual gifts. Practically all the studies limit themselves to the gifts. We are convinced that for Paul charisma - Spirit, diakonia - Lord and energêma - God are of equal importance in Paul's discussion concerning the pneumatika within the body of Christ in chapters 12-14. This limit in focus results from different factors, namely: the interpretation of pneumatika (12:1) as spiritual gifts (or spiritual persons); treating 12:1-3 as a mere introduction that further has nothing to do with the argumentation of chapters 12-14; the common view that the terms charisma, diakonia and energêma in 12:4-6 are merely interchangeable; and due to the focus on gifts - Spirit the references to Christ and God within Paul's argumentation did not receive appropriate attention (12:1-3,4-6,12-27; chapter 14). Taking into account these overlooked factors we will argue that pneumatika needs to be understood in its literal meaning "spiritual things" (cf. Tibbs, Religious Experience of the Pneuma, 2007, 46-47). This reading highlights that vv.4-6 serve as Paul's understanding of pneumatika within Christian worship. Paul is not only correcting and instructing the Corinthians about the spiritual gifts but rather about the pneumatika, their general understanding of spiritual things, of which charisma, diakonia and energêma are necessary aspects. Paul is explaining to the Corinthians, who are infants in Christ (3:1), that the pneumatika are guided by the holy Spirit who endows them with a grace-gift (charisma), which they should not use for personal advantage but in the service (diakonia) of the Lord, i.e., the building up of the church and only in this way can the activity (energêma) of God be at work during worship.

Among the designations applied on what are considered literary features and figures in the Hebrew Bible there is one in particular that is used extensively on numerous examples proposed by a large amount of scholars, and that is hendiadys. The term is also applied on constructions in e.g. Akkadian, Arabic and Aramaic. The subject hendiadys is dealt with in depth in my now completed dissertation, in which a morpho-syntactic and semantic analysis is carried out on over 1600 collected examples of suggested or suspected hendiadyses from the Hebrew Bible, and comparisons are made with some of the features in other Semitic languages, especially Akkadian. It is obvious that the term hendiadys is applied on various phenomena and combinations of components in the Hebrew Bible, of which some represent regular grammatical constructions or literary features, whereas others constitute more unusual grammatical, rhetorical and/or stylistic phenomena. The investigation has resulted in some unexpected and surprising results that have implications not only for interpretations and translations, but also for stylistic and typological studies of these constructions. This paper will present the results of the investigation of the phenomena in the Hebrew Bible, as well as some of these features in other Semitic languages, unto which the term hendiadys is applied.

F. C. Baur holds an ambiguous place in the history of the discipline of biblical theology. On the one hand, his Tendenzkritik proceeds on the assumption of an irreconcilable plurality in the historical sources of early Christianity, and so comprises a challenge to the attempt to find a unified New Testament theology, much less a pan-biblical theology. On the other hand, his own historical reconstruction of the development of early Christianity does have a certain unity in the historical process of overcoming conflict. This paper seeks to explore this ambiguity as a way of locating Baur in the history of biblical theology. First Baur’s challenge to unified conceptions of New Testament theology is addressed, together with his striking lack of emphasis on the Old Testament roots of the New. As a second stage, however, the question is posed: in what sense might Baur nevertheless be conceived of as a biblical theologian? Some concluding thoughts critically evaluate Baur’s contribution to biblical theology today.

The main task of the paper is to illustrate theologies of disability in Early Christianity and special attention will be paid to the Act of Peter. It narrates how Peter is living with his pious disabled virgin daughter. The text is preserved in the Coptic Berlin Codex (also known as Papyrus Berolinensis 8502.4 or the Akhmim Codex). This Act of Peter is included in some versions of the Acts of Peter, a Greek manuscript originated from the second half of the 2nd century. Through the investigation of the intertextuality of the Act of Peter, the Petrine reception of the canonical texts is illustrated and thus its dialogue partners (e.g. the Acts of the Apostles) are identified. For instances, whereas the power and effectiveness of apostolic healing is highlighted in the Acts of the Apostles, the biblical text ascertains the divine continuity of Jesus’ deeds in the world. In this manner, the Apostle Peter successfully heals the sick which is in line with Jesus’ healing. The Act of Peter, in sharp contrast, highlights the willingness of Peter and his daughter to resume her disability after Peter’s successful healing. It is not only a note of optimism about disability. Rather, it gives positive meaning to the state of disability (i.e. saving Peter’s daughter as well as Ptolemaeus). The attitude of the Act of Peter to disability was welcomed in the reception history, which is well shown in the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus and Augustine’s allusion to this apocryphal Acts. In the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, this pious disabled virgin even received a great name of Petronilla. In this way, the Act of Peter impacted the development of a kind of theology of disability in Early Christianity which esteemed piety higher than normality.

The notion of faith or trust (pistis) looms large in the writings of Paul. Paul describes Abraham as trusting God and Jesus’ crucifixion as an act of trust, and he praises his various audiences for their trust in his message. Adopting a rhetorical perspective, this paper suggests that Paul is also using the notion of trust to convince his audiences of his own trustworthiness. The theme of personal trustworthiness runs through the Hebrew Scriptures. We see examples of it in biblical characters such as Joseph, the earlier narratives of David (1 Samuel), and Daniel, both with regard to their relations to their own rulers and to foreign overlords. Moral philosophers at and around the time of Paul addressed the notion of trustworthiness in their discussions on fidelity and friendship. Both Seneca the Younger (4 BCE–65 CE) in his Epistulae morales ad Lucilium and before him Cicero (Laelius de Amicitia) hold fidelity and friendship in high regard. Finally, the apocryphal letters Paul and Seneca attest to a reputation of trustworthiness that developed around both writers, both became known for their loyalty to their respective constituencies: Paul to his followers and to the crucified Jesus and Seneca to the emperor Nero. My purpose in this paper is to explore whether viewing Paul through the lens of trustworthiness can shed new light on his overall purpose and mission.

Along with Gen 1:27, Gen 2:24 stands in support of Jesus’ response to his fellow Jewish interlocutors about divorce according to the anecdote preserved in Mark 10:2-9 and Matt 19:3-9. Gen 2:24 also serves Paul’s argument against illicit sexual relations in 1 Cor 6:12-20 within a broader context which also cites Jesus’ teaching about divorce. The oneness motif serves to underline permanence in the anecdote and to underline severance from previous oneness in Paul’s argument. This paper will explore the extent to which both usages may inform each other’s interpretation, including whether the flipside of arguing oneness is arguing severance of prior relations and so potentially providing a rationale for Matthew’s version of the divorce logion and perhaps indicating what might have been the stance also of the historical Jesus.

In the Apocryphon of John the counterfeit spirit represents a contrast to the Spirit of life. The rule of the true spirit or of the counterfeit spirit is decisive for the destiny of the soul. The struggle between these two different spirits within the human soul is the struggle between the transcendent divine realm and the lower world. Obviously these two different spirits represent a dualistic concept. I would like to discuss the nature of this concept. Since the myth of the fallen angels in its interpretation of 1 Enoch is used in the Apocryphon of John as a mythological vehicle to place the counterfeit spirit into men, one might ask if the counterfeit spirit is a sort of passion to cheat people and withhold true knowledge from them. Or does the contrast of the true Spirit as part of the transcendent divine world and the counterfeit spirit describe ontological or demonological counter worlds? Different dualistic strategies of Jewish and Christian origin should be considered. The main decision is between an ethical or metaphysical dualism. The interesting question will be how much misery in people’s lives that is under the control of the ruler of the world is their own fault? Or is it the result of structural evil? And how then is salvation possible in the context of the Apocryphon of John?

The paper will discuss a dark brown stealite dome-shaped Hebrew iconic inscribed seal, published in Biblical Period Epigraphy: The Josef Chaim Kaufman Collection ( Vol II, 2011) by Robert Deutsch. As Deutsch notes, it shows Egyptianized characteristics. I will elaborate on the Egyptian religious and cultural backdrop of the icons and the inscription. That an icon that small and a message that short displays such skillful work is evidence of the rich genius of the patron and his Hebrew seal cutter.

The Author of the Book of Revelation not only reinterprets, alludes to, and echoes various passages of the Enochic literature, in the same way as he does with the other Prophets, but he even seems to present himself as some sort of a "new Enoch" for his followers. This should allow us a series of critical reflections on what could have been considered "Scripture" by different groups of follower of Jesus towards the end of the First Century CE.

The first part of this paper queries the current classification of Ap. John as a Sethian text (“the most classic of Sethian texts”). Seth and his seed are only mentioned in passing in this document, and not the Gnostics but rather all human beings are believed to be Sethians, inasmuch as they all belong to Seth’s progeny and as such possess the divine dunamis (the “power of the Mother”). That not all humans are Gnostics is seen as a consequence of their decision to be guided by the archontic “counterfeit spirit” rather than by Epinoia/Pronoia, the divine spirit. (Basically the same idea occurs in the Gospel of Judas.) The second part focuses on the creation of Adam in Ap. John. How could the Gnostic authors refer to Moses’ report of this primordial event and at the same time criticize his words? Two possible solutions will be considered. First, the authors may have been convinced that the biblical story reveals some truth about the first man and his Creator if it is understood in a Gnostic way. Secondly, and more importantly, a few features of Ap. John’s creation story suggest that it did not develop from attempts to solve exegetical problems of the Genesis text, as is sometimes assumed in recent scholarship, but from a Platonizing myth about the creation of man after a luminous prototype - a myth which was secondarily embellished with references to – and half-quotations from – the biblical text. Where Moses’ words deviated from their own ideas Gnostic mythmakers felt free to criticize them.

Scholars have long recognized the shift away from communal protest and toward communal confession in prayers of the early Jewish period. Petitioners began to turn accusations against themselves through confession, and sought to absolve God of all wrongdoing. However, there is still a need for clarity concerning the rhetorical function of self-accusation in early Jewish prayers. There is an additional need to explain the role of communal confession in those prayers that also include protestations of innocence. Building on the recent work of David Lambert and Gary Anderson, and through an exploration of several apocryphal prayers (e.g., Bar 1:15-3:8; Tob 3:1-6; Pr Azar vv. 3-22), I seek to explain communal confession and protestations of innocence in terms of an underlying Deuteronomic narrative structure (sin-punishment-appeal-obedience-deliverance). I suggest that through confession petitioners sought to locate Israel at the latter end of the timeline laid out in the Deut 30, and thus to offer grounds for deliverance (a) despite Israel’s persistent disobedience, or (b) on the basis of Israel’s innocence. God was just in carrying out the covenant curses against Israel for its sins. However, Israel had endured its period of punishment and was now turning to God in appeal. Within this matrix, petitioners confess sin not to fulfill a precondition for deliverance (as such was never required in Deuteronomy), but rather to persuade God that the time for redemption was at hand. Protestations of innocence in some prayers located Israel even further down the eschatological timeline. Early Jewish communal prayers of confession thus exhibit continuity with earlier prayers of communal protest, which are similarly aimed at petitioning for deliverance from distress. This paper also locates apocryphal prayers in relation to earlier and contemporaneous prayers in terms of their use of confession and protestations of innocence.

To what extent might we think of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls as a distinctive corpus, and what criteria should be used for making this assessment? If the Aramaic Scrolls are considered to be a distinctive corpus, how do we then appraise their place among the Hebrew and Greek texts from the 11 Qumran caves? This paper will present the physical evidence of the Aramaic texts from Qumran (caves, scribes and hands, etc.), offer criteria for assessing the interdependence of these texts, propose that at least some of the Aramaic Scrolls constitute a distinctive group, and seek to preliminarily situate this group among the Scrolls more broadly.

This paper focuses on the supernatural experiential elements and events that attend the Epistle to the Hebrews’ portrayal of the heavenly sanctuary, and attempts to demonstrate the integral relationship of these elements and events to the author’s overarching hortatory effort. Hebrews’ narratival construction of the heavenly sanctuary is not simply an “updated and expanded” version of the tradition, intended to stir the addressed community’s imagination; rather, the author’s goal is for the community to actually be present in that sacred place, to truly benefit from Christ’s actions performed there, and to participate in the Son’s exaltation. Their presence and participation is effected via the author’s repeated calls to “draw near” and enter the heavenly sanctuary (4:14–16; 6:18–20; 10:19–23; 12:22–24), which have as their goal a transformative encounter with God and his Son, as well as their involvement in a divine adoption ceremony (2:12–13). Mystical visuality, working in concert with the rhetorical practices of ekphrasis and enargeia, together provide crucial assistance to this effort: besides a number of vivid descriptions of the heavenly sanctuary and Jesus’ sacral actions therein, the author exhorts the community to “see” the exalted Son (2:9; 3:1; 9:24–26; 12:2) and their involvement in the adoption ceremony (2:13; 10:24–25). This visual program directly serves the author’s ultimate hortatory purpose: just as Moses “persevered by seeing him who is invisible” (11:27), so also the community’s waning commitment will be reversed when they actualize their true identity as the family of God, and “see” in Jesus that their steadfastness in suffering will surely issue in vindication (2:6–10).

2 Chr. 33:1–20 and 2 Kings 21:1–18 present two different traditions concerning Manasseh. Such differences have long been discussed by scholars and proposals concerning the dissimilitude are overwhelming. More striking is the fact that part of the former text finds parallel to that in the latter. Such fact prompts readers to quest why and how a later traditio transforms a received traditum. In answering such questions, this article will employ two reading strategies proposed respectively by Michael Fishbane and James A. Sanders on the Chronicler's account of Manneseh. By employing Fishbane's aggadic exegesis, theological concerns that bring about the transformation in the Chronicler's text are systematically analyzed. The techniques leading to the formation of the new traditum are also highlighted. Sander's method of intertextuality, however, views the text from another angle. Instead of confining to how a new traditio comes forth from an ancient traditum, dialogues between the accounts of Manasseh in Samuel-Kings and in Chronicles are underscored. More importantly, the historical context of the intended readers is also taken into consideration which allows us to extract how the transformed narrative in the Chronicles corresponds to the time of its composition. Instead of mutually exclusive to one another, the paper will illustrate that the methodologies so mentioned can be employed simultaneously to attain a fuller picture on the function of Manasseh in the Chronicler's text.

The instalment of the Codex Sinaiticus website has opened new possibilities and hitherto unparalleled favourable conditions for the study of this important Christian artefact. The transcription in particular provides a very efficient platform for the study of corrections, as the hard work of their identification seems to have been done. Whereas this is certainly true of all the later layers, the earliest layer, labeled monolithically as "S1", entails certain unusual difficulties. Firstly, it has been (relatively securely) established that the original scribes were also responsible for the early corrections. In some places, however, two different early hands can be detected in the same correcting event. Furthermore, some corrections were made in scribendo, while others were added during the scribe’s subsequent revision of his work. Yet several other corrections were added by the second scribe of the scriptorium. Secondly, while a rather safe label “S1” can be useful when broadly discriminating the scriptorium corrections from the later ones, the above mentioned complexities challenge its usefulness for the study of their textual affinities. More than one scribe can potentially mean more than one exemplar–a truism observable in several corrections found in the NT portion of Sinaiticus. This present paper aims to re-open the discussion of Sinaiticus’ early corrections in light of these issues; preliminary methodological considerations shall be outlined and briefly illustrated.

Scholarly consensus places the first redaction of Midrash Tanhuma near the end of the classical era of the aggadic midrashim, which spans the fifth to the seventh centuries CE. It is assumed that this first redaction took place in Palestine; thus, the Tanhuma literature should be assumed to reflect the world of late Palestinian Byzantine Jewish culture. Comparison with parallels in the earlier midrashim, especially Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta deRav Kahana, points to the fact that the content of these texts, whether in written or oral form, was known to the Tanhuma redactors. Previous research has demonstrated techniques of redaction of Midrash Tanhuma in relation to this earlier material; these include both faithful copying of the earlier traditions as well as their integration into new structures and contexts, combining these earlier traditions with traditions culled from other works. In the present study I wish to use these assumptions regarding the relationship of the Tanhuma material with the earlier midrashic parallels in order to delineate some aspects of the religious world of the Tanhuma redactors. Through a comparison of what has been selected by the Tanhuma redactors from the earlier material and how this selected material is presented, including its relocation in new contexts, it is possible to determine changes in religious interests and emphases through the centuries of the Byzantine era. The issues encountered in this preliminary study, which compares selected passages in the Midrash Tanhuma with the parallel passages in the earlier midrashim and outlines differences of view inherent in each, include views of Torah study, relationship to the observance of the commandments, marital relations and the relationship between Jews and the non-Jewish world around them.

More than a theological or confessional interpretation, a literary approach to the study of the Bible and the Qur'an can investigate the way in which they convey their message and contents. Several scholars have attempted to study the literary structures of the Bible and, more recently, of the Qur'an, following some modern Muslim exegetes, for example Amin Ahsan Islahi (d. 1997). Assuming that the Bible and the Qur'an are literary texts means that both employ a series of rhetorical devices, tropes and figures of speech, such as humor and irony, in ways that are, in principle, no different from those generally employed in literature. As Mustansir Mir (1991) first demonstrated and Georges Tamer (2009) recently maintained, the Qur'an, as well as the Bible, doesn’t lack humor. As a matter of fact, humor and mockery seem to be among the major strategies the Bible and Qur'an employ to teach some eschatological and theological truths, to condemn the unbelievers’ beliefs and deeds, as well as to portray ridiculous characters and to emphasize absurd situations. My paper will deal with the biblical and Qur'anic use of irony against idolaters. Irony is usually defined as a kind of antiphrastic sentence, based on a contrast between what is said and what is really meant and thought. Thus, it achieves a particular reversed logic, creating an incongruous and ambiguous connection between appearance and reality. However, religious irony and sarcasm attach to this general definition an additional moral outlook, the divine judgment, thus outlining God’s function as the 'Great Ironist.' This paper aims to draw attention to the rhetorical and pragmatic aspects of such instances, which are intended to produce puzzlement among the unbelievers and, by means of raising ironic questions, induce them to revise their cruel practices and illogical belief-system.

In Job 4 Eliphaz strengthened his argument with an appeal on a nightly apparition. He thought God gave him wisdom and insight, and therefore he adduced the words of a spirit (ruach) in his speech to Job. Usually these words are seen as a divine message, in the same way as Eliphaz saw them. However, if in Job 3 and 5 allusions to spirits are made, it is possible to think about another possibility in Job 4. Several arguments can be adduced for the view that a demon or negative spirit tried to persuade Eliphaz.

This paper will analyze some examples of libraries from the ancient world in different socio-cultural contexts, focusing on Graeco-Roman, Near Eastern and Jewish cultures. These data will be compared with the evidence from Qumran in order to (try to) ascertain if, and to what extent, the widely used concept of "sectarian" library is applicable outside Qumran. On the other hand, such a comparison might shed some light on the difference between a sectarian library and a library containing sectarian texts.

People who have dreams may choose to tell them to others or to keep them private. If they choose to tell them, what are their motives? Is ‘retelling’ a dream no more than a means of sharing a wished-for outcome or, less pleasantly, a means of authenticating a lie? A person is more or less bound to interpret their own dreams for themselves and may choose to share that interpretation once they have shared the dream. Again the two questions arise. Is this possibly a power play within a family or among friends? Or is it a way of lying to one’s closest companions? The dreams of Joseph spring to mind in this scenario. The interpretation of another person’s dream/s can also be subjected to the same interrogation. By telling the interpreter one’s dream the dreamer puts himself/herself somewhat into the power of the interpreter and can, therefore, be manipulated. Not, however, if the dreamer is a person of great status. There, the danger will be to the interpreter. The principle of ‘Kill the Messenger’ could well apply. The interpreter must be an extremely skilful diplomat and a crafty manipulator of the egos and wills of others to survive giving the interpretation. Again Joseph plays a starring role. In this paper, his motives and methods will be scrutinised.

In April 2010 I travelled to St. Louis to present a paper at the 2010 National Conference of the Pop Culture Association/American Cultural Association. This was my second such presentation at this annual gathering of culture scholars. The paper, entitled How Eve Got Her Little Green Dress: Fleur de Mal, The Femme Fatale and Illustrated Children's Bibles, was scheduled in the Young Adult Literature and Fashion Session along with papers discussing among other topics: costumes in Vampire fiction, fashion accessories, and tattoos. This curious session assignment can be connected with the absence of discussion of the bible in the context of popular culture scholarship generally, and reflects an attitude of bemused benevolence that attends to the introduction of biblically sourced themes in the scholarly discourse. This paper will offer an examination of the role of the Bible in this particular context with a view to tracing out assumptions that underlie the uneasy relationship between the Bible and popular culture when viewed from the perspective of the academic engagement of popular culture.

It is often assumed that magic was fundamental to everyday life in the early Roman empire and that this explains its significance in the New Testament, and particularly in the Acts of the Apostles. Indeed, many New Testament scholars would agree with the words of Hans Dieter Betz, "Magical beliefs and practices can hardly be overestimated in their importance for the daily lives of the people. The religious beliefs and practices of most people were identical with some form of magic." (Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation). It is certainly easy enough to marshal references to primary texts from the period that seem to indicate that magic was indeed a prominent feature of the first-century world. Artefacts too, whether amulets or defixiones, seem to confirm such a picture. However, such evidence only indicates the presence of belief (of some kind) in magic; gauging the nature of such belief, its prevalence, and its significance, requires a more sustained and rigorous analysis of popular cultural sources from the early empire, and one that attends not just to the apparent presence of magic but also its absence. Magic emerges as inconsequential, of only fleeting importance and the object of only the most attenuated and sporadic belief except amongst a handful in the early empire. In the light of this, New Testament texts appear as eccentric products of a sub-culture whose distinctive "gaze" creates the useful, oppositional illusion of an enchanted and enslaved world. The paper presents both a re-evaluation of the significance of magic in the early empire, and some explanations for its significance in New Testament texts. In foregrounding the importance of popular culture in re-assessing assumed cultural beliefs and practices in the early empire, it may also provides a model that is far more widely applicable.

In both the undisputed letters and in one of the Pastorals there are references of the sufferings and experiences of persecutions Paul has been through. In 2 Cor., 11.23-33, Paul describes the harshness and counts the frequency of the fustigations, canings and the incarcerations he suffered for being a minister of Christ. In 2. Tim. 1.8; 12, 2.9-10, 3.10-11, 4.6-8; 16 we learn about a new imprisonment and the abandonment by some of his former co-associates. Imprisonment is a situation, that causes emotional distress, anxiety, excessive grief and physical pain, because of the socialstigma and the loss of former dignity. The emotional anguish was even more considerable in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean society, where honor and shame were dominant and defined a person's place in the society. The pressure exerted on the prisoner's household, friends and circle of acquaintances was also considerable, and often resulted to his abandonment on their behalf, whether it was out of fear, contempt or shame. Incarceration was associated with stripping, flogging or beating in order to shame the individual. The reactions of those in bonds expressed their sense of shame and could be extreme. Paul was concerned about the potential destructive results of his imprisonments on the mission, the church and his co-workers, and the relationship of the Christian community with those "on the outside". He encouraged the believers and associates and hoped for the success of the mission, even under those circumstances. The paradox he introduces, is that of a man who does not try to throw his social disgrace in oblivion, but on the contrary boasts about his passions...

When studying sexuality in the New Testament, many exegetes –mining Foucault and Halperin- stress the discontinuities between “our” and “their” system. By underlining differences in gender systems (two-poles in the present, a continuum in the past), variations in desire arrangements (one desire taken to intolerable extremes in the past, two kinds of desires in the present), “classical” queer theory has helped to defuse moralizing views on Scripture. In the present paper I submit that such analysis is too monolithic and does not account for the complicating ways in which contemporary lived experiences of sex/gender/desire/ pleasure/agency/identity challenge the hegemonic duality of the homosexual/heterosexual system. To put it briefly, discontinuity works to occlude our present. Using anthropological research on contemporary systems of sexuality (queer diasporas and marginal desire configurations) I show that, as far as the New Testament is concerned, underlining the radical differences is not enough in defusing contemporary homophobic exegetical approaches. It is not enough because such an approach reifies what Judith Butler has termed as the “heterosexual matrix” as an assemblage of norms that produces subjects whose gender/sex/desire coheres in an intelligible way. In sum, the paper deals with the following question: Is it responsible enough to (exclusively) stress the differences between our contemporary sexual system and the biblical one when such account is grounded on the exclusion of experiences that do not cohere (partly or at all) with the hegemonic assumptions of the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy? To put it differently, is the project of “differential historicism” too ‘heterosexist’?

This paper discusses the Leviticus traditions preserved at the Qumran library and aims at assessing them both textually and in terms of historical legal development. The evidence from Qumran indicates that the text of the Book of Leviticus had achieved a relatively uniform state by the second half of the Second Temple period. This stands in contrast to, e.g., the Books of Exodus and Numbers which appear to have been still in a pluriform state and to display two or more literary editions. Nonetheless, the text of Leviticus served as a source for a great amount of interpretive scribal creativity, often going beyond the boundaries of the legal genre. Of the twenty-seven chapters of Leviticus, all but one are quoted in the non-scriptural scrolls, and as many as twenty-five non-scriptural works contain quotes from Leviticus. This large quantity of material paints a vivid picture of the centrality of the Leviticus traditions for Second Temple Judaism and the community at Qumran.

This presentation will assess the state of research on and interpretation of the Gospel of Judas and Codex Tchacos five years after the publication of a critical edition of the codex in 2007. Since that time a substantial number of books and articles on the texts of Codex Tchacos have been published, varying interpretations have been proposed, and newly recovered fragments have been placed. The recent publication of two books - by Lance Jenott and Marvin Meyer - provides the occasion to reflect upon what we have done thus far and what remains to be accomplished.

Persian and Hellenistic dates have been offered for the composition and the final form of the book of Esther. This paper re-examines the question of the date of the book of Esther by surveying the reasoning behind the variance in dating. It will highlight the criteria used for asserting the date of the material and draw in new arguments about the origin and type of story to see if they offer new evidence to help adjudicate the matter.

The paper proposes a different interpretation of the account about Dinah's rape by Shechem in Gen 34. Shechem is in the narrative the name of the city lord's son, but in the same time is the name of the place where the Samaritans built their temple. Archaeological opinions about the very beginning of the erection of the Samaritan temple are taking into consideration the Achaemenid period (5th cent.). Therefore Dinah's rape by Shechem could be read as a metaphorical narrative suggesting the transgression of justice (Heb. dinah), the divine Law, through the building of Samaritan Temple. The narrative in Gen 34 attests to a multilayered redaction, so the oldest might be a family story, but the latest could involve the historical contextualizing of the literal core. The revenge of Dinah's brothers, Levi and Simeon, and their rebuke by their father (also Gen 49) could be read as a dissimulate reaction against religious fundamentalism of the priests and Levites on the part of the laymen. Probably this suggests that some of the Judahites saw the building of the Samarita n Temple as a sinful act, but didn't agree with the priestly polemics (as in Ezra-Nehemiah). Probably not on a grand scale, the conflict model for the Yehud community suits in the best way to the new theories about the late redaction of biblical literature. The Pentateuch was a sort of compromise literature between Deuteronomic nationalists and priestly circles, with the remark that not all of the Deuteronomic laymen shared the same nationalist ideas. For the reviser of Gen 34 the zeal of the Levites caused the hatred (hib'is) in the people of the land (yoseb ha'ares v. 30), where a better solution might have been the assimilation (v. 16) based on sincere feelings (v. 8).

The paper explores how the topic of urban apocalypse, city-collapse, is mediated in biblical text via the imaginary figure of a female subject. The woman embodies both the bereavement caused to an urban community by its ruination and the corruption/ pride of a city, which leads to material disaster. The literary use of embodied spaces allows the reader to examine the regulatory function of the female body as a city's alter ego. Case studies are taken from Lamentations and Revelation; a spatial/ theoretical dialogue is engaged with the work of Yi-Fu Tuan and Elizabeth Grosz.

The study of paradox of circularity has been one of the most neglected areas in contemporary biblical scholarship for the latter half of the 20th century. The study was pioneered by Russell (1932) in the early 20th century, but soon to be treated as invalid (nonsense) in formal logic. Its intention was pragmatic, but the consequence of this mainstream decision has been somewhat devastating, especially in biblical scholarship. As a result, biblical paradox has been one of the most confused, ignored, neglected, or misunderstood areas in biblical and theological scholarship in the latter half of the 20th century. However, there has been a renewed interest due to the innovative approach and breakthrough in the study of paradox of circularity pioneered by Kripke (1975). In this paper, the author explores this new paradigm in the study and analysis of biblical paradox of circularity, and proposes a critical method toward the analysis of biblical paradox of circularity and circular constructs.

The phrase "book of remembrance" in Mal 3:16 has typically been explained as a reference to a historiographical book by appealing to the similar phrase in Esther. These so-called Books of Remembrance have been adduced to be narrative chronicles produced by the Achaemenid bureaucracy; Yhwh in Mal 3:16 is supposed to be acting as did the Achaemenid king. This approach based on a late literary source should be abandoned in favour of using the evidence from an actual Persian-period temple bureaucracy: the lists from Elephantine, usually ignored in order to focus on the petitions and memoranda pertaining to the YHW temple's destruction. In this paper I examine the Elephantine lists. Then I read the lists together with Mal 3:16: the biblical phrase may shed light on the purpose of the lists at Elephantine, while the Elephantine texts may help us understand the form and content of such a "Book of Remembrance."

Scholars frequently puzzle over the opening moves in the argument of Hebrews. The first two chapters of the letter contain some of the most difficult exegetical issues contained in this text. Why, for example, does the argument begin with a comparison between the Son and the angels? What and where is the “world” the Son entered in 1:6, and when does the author imagine him to have entered it? What sort of cosmological assumptions underlie the argument of the letter’s first chapters? This paper examines recent literature on Hebrews with a view to surveying current discussions on Hebrews 1-2. In addition to summarizing current research, some of the most significant interpretive concerns are identified and suggestions are presented in an attempt to show what seems to be the most fruitful ways forward for understanding the complex argument of this epistle.

This paper examines the function of the thorn in Paul's flesh (2 Cor. 12:710) in light of ancient theories of possession and medical anthropology. It argues that Paul uses the ancient view of punctured and porous bodies as vulnerable to possession, disease, and invasion to undergird his theory of bodily perfection in Christ. This theory, in turn, is used to support Paul's claims to authority and to trump those of his opponents.

In the recent past, scholars of different provenance have tried to identify parts of the Hebrew Bible as ‘female voices’ or sources generated in female circles. While the identification of songs or psalms that might have originated among women has some plausibility, in view of restricted access of women to literacy the identification of larger literary units that might have been authored or collected by women is less convincing. This paper focuses on Bathsheba’s story and revises E.A. Knauf’s argument that “it is Bathsheba’s voice that we hear,” (LDiff 2/2002, n.p.) and that parts of the Court Narrative were written from Bathsheba’s perspective, as other Judean queens had an important share in the production and collection of larger parts of the books of Samuel and Kings. At first, the paper reviews his implicit presuppositions when he tries to identify female voices in the Hebrew Bible, such as the extent and ways of a possible involvement of upper class women in the literary production of their time., and whether the text contains any insider knowledge limited specifically to women of the palace or specific traits that are not imaginable to any learned male author. Next, it examines allegedly ‘female’ vs. ‘male’ argumentative patterns and language in Bathsheba’s story. Thus the paper combines questions and methods employed by conventional literary criticism as well as modern feminist criticism. Finally, it tries to account for the mutual disinterest or even reluctance of both approaches to include observations of the other into one’s theory: important categories in this explanation are divergent attitudes towards biblical ideology, authority, individual experience, and practical relevance. A proposal is made how to bridge this gap for the mutual benefit of both scholarly approaches.

According to Hans Walter Wolff (Anthropologie des Alten Testaments, newly ed. by Janowski 2010) naefaesch in the OT anthropology is one of the four “Grunddimensionen” (base dimensions) of the human being. To show its meaning and its importance he also takes in account many poetic texts. Risto Lauha (Psychophysischer Sprachgebrauch im Alten Testament, 1983) however intends that naefaesch in poetry most often is just a substitute for a pronoun, without any deeper meaning, used only because of the metric system or to avoid the double use of a suffix in the same verse. Therefore, according to Lauha those texts should not be used to describe an anthropological concept. The paper wants to emphasize that the truth lies in the middle: naefaesch with a suffix is indeed often used as a pronoun in poetic texts and translating it with a pronoun does not change the sense or lead to a big loss of information. But very often there is a reason, why the poet uses this word and not another, for example leb or ruach: he refers to an anthropological concept, which connects things like feeling, needfulness or vitality with the naefaesch. Therefore, the use of naefaesch in poetic texts can indeed lead us to the poet’s anthropological concept. Just like the contemporary use of heart in lyrics shows that this organ is in the occidental tradition connected to feelings. A lover normally would not say “my liver loves you”, but “you are my heart’s true love” is a common phrase. The paper takes a closer look on references in which naefaesch can be translated by a pronoun and tries to work out the anthropological concept behind that poetic use by reflecting the context and the poet’s informative intention.

In the scholarly debate, exousia in 8:9 is taken to denote the ‘right’ that some ‘knowledgeable’ Corinthian Christians had claimed to have towards idol food because of the fact that they had the knowledge that an idol was ‘nothing.’ According to Paul these Christians showed no consideration for ‘the weak’ Christians, namely those who had been so familiarised with idol worship that for them the idol food eating that they might have been tempted to take up would have been equivalent to idol worship. The general understanding in the scholarship is that Paul uses exousia (and gnôsis) derogatorily, in order to show his disagreement with the claims to ‘rights’ on the part of such ‘knowledgeable’ Christians. The paper analyses Paul’s argumentation and rhetorical strategy in 8:1-13 from the perspective of the clarification of the elusive character of gnôsis and especially that of exousia in this pericope. Given the relatedness of the topics in 8:1-13 and 10:23-11:1, as well as the similarities between Paul’s positions in 8:1-13 and 10:29b30, the paper assesses comparatively the meaning of exousia in 8:9 and eleutheria in 10:29 in their respective contexts. The paper argues that the evaluation of exousia in 8:9 in the scholarship does not take account of the meaning and function of eleutheria in its context of 10:23-11:1. The paper attempts to point out that the understanding of exousia in 8:9 as the alleged ‘right’ to eat food that had been offered to idols that the Corinthians claimed undermines Paul’s essential distinction between freedom from and freedom to that in our view Paul makes in 8:1-13. That is to say, the Corinthians should not make their sovereignty with regard to idol food into a freedom actually to eat idol food irrespective of and/or at the expense of their ‘weaker’ Christian fellows.

In my paper I intend to look at one passage, 2 Cor 3:18, which has benefitted from recent cognitive and social approaches. Firstly, Paul’s description of moving ‘from glory to glory’ in the passage has garnered interest into the nature of Paul’s individual religious experience, with recent insights from as far afield as neuro-biology and neuro-psychology. Secondly, Paul’s negative portrayal of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7-15 can, on the basis of social memory theory, be understood as a reconfiguration of Moses from being on par with Christ (in 1 Cor 10:1) to now becoming a reflection of the ‘pre-converted’ Paul prior to his encounter with the Kyrios (in 2 Cor 3:18). Thirdly, Paul’s language of transformation can, from the perspective of disability studies, be understood as bearing witness to a world-making condition in which physical impairment/disability is in fact deemed acceptable to the divinity, if one takes seriously Paul’s claims, elsewhere in the epistle, to ‘power made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor 12:9) and ‘treasure in clay jars’ (2 Cor 4:9). What has not so far been done is to examine whether integrating these three independent theories might offer a new perspective, in this case on Paul’s theology (for want of a better term). I will argue that such integration, done carefully, leads to an intriguing discovery: that the image of a suffering God was cast in the image of a suffering apostle rather than the reverse.

There is consensus amongst researchers that the tales in Daniel (Daniel 1-6) are not historical chronicles. The tales rather resemble the Joseph and Esther tales. The themes and motives of the Daniel tales also connects with those of the wisdom literature. Daniel 1 has a sixth century historical background, the Babylonian exile. But the stories of Daniel, the wise man, were used again in the second century to encourage the Jewish people who were suffering under the policy of hellenization followed by Antioch IV Epiphanes. The hypothesis of this seminar is that the tale in Daniel 1 is confirmed as wisdom literature by the writer's utilisation of one of the important points of departure of wisdom literature, namely the dogma of retribution. In this seminar I use a semiotic analysis of Daniel 1. In a semiotic analysis a tale or story unit is divided in lexemes in order that the functions and qualifications within each lexeme can be revealed. The distinction of functions and qualifications enable the researcher to describe the pertinent transformations in the tale, as well as to describe the plot and the role players. And the description of pertinent transformations, plot and role players are necessary to describe the semiotic squares within the tale as well as the narrative programmes. At the end the researcher will be able to describe the values and convictions which the narrator wished to bring under the attention of his/her listeners.

It has become a truism in recent scholarship that ancient men were not born, but made. Being a man was no mean feat, and required constant vigilance and upkeep. Self-control should be seen as an important part of this vigilance and showing strong emotions as a man was consequently a risky venture. How are we to understand Paul’s references to his tears (2 Cor 2,4; Phil 3,18) in the context of the precarious nature of ancient masculinity? This paper will argue that Paul’s portrayal of himself is closely bound up with his mission to portray a crucified man as a divine saviour. This mission forces him to come up with an understanding of masculinity that includes suffering and weakness, while still confirming power and control as its essential characteristics. The flexibility with which Paul incorporates experiences and emotions, such as his crying, that were considered to be unmanly, should not be understood as dexterity at adapting an elite standard for male behaviour. Rather, they are evidence of his non-elite status, showing him to be in every sense a self-made man.

The aim of the paper is to present the often discussed case of ethnogenesis of Judah in the light of anthropology, history and biblical studies. The different methodologies and approaches provoke different results, however the join usage of historical study with the anthropological tools (often overlapping) may help in understanding the processes of group (ethnic, social or political) formation. The paper proposes the new view of the circumstances in which Judah arose as the new political unit.

One of the most disputed issues in the study of Numbers concerns the relationship between the so-called priestly laws in Numbers, the Holiness legislation (H) in Lev 17-26, and other legal collections in the Pentateuch, such as the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy. The following paper will address this issue through a reexamination of the tithe law in Num 18, in discussion with some recent studies on this law. In particular, two main points will be made. (1) Num 18 represents a revision of the deuteronomic tithe law in Deut 14, and not the other way round. However, that revision was not meant to replace but to supplement the law of Deut 14. (2) Num 18 is part of a compositional layer within Numbers which is later than Lev 27 (itself a late supplement to the H legislation in Lev 17-26) and thus already presupposes the editorial closure of the book of Leviticus. While the influence of H on this compositional layer is unmistakable, assigning the priestly laws of Numbers to a Holiness school, stratum or redaction does not do justice to the chronological, compositional and conceptual development that is evinced in these laws with regard to the Holiness legislation in particular, and to Leviticus in general. What is required instead is a model that recognizes the priestly laws of Numbers as a distinct, post-Leviticus composition within the Torah.

Epiphany stories are found in all religions; I will analyze, using cognitive methodology, a few such stories from various religions.

The Epistle of Baruch, sent to the nine and a half tribes exiled beyond the river, covers the last ten chapters of 2 Baruch (chapters. 78-87) and its pseudo historical setting – the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE and Babylonian exile. All are agreed that it was composed at the end of the first century CE. The author, under the biblical mantle of Baruch, the son of Neriah, consoles his people by pointing to the near -approaching End of Times, and by calling them to remember the Law and Zion and to pray. Going against the widely accepted Jewish identity of the letter, I argue for Christian authorship and addressees. Based on its description (77:12) as a 'letter of doctrine and a scroll of tidings (or gospel)', I show that it may indeed be understood in terms of the Christian gospel. The Epistle, like the gospel, promises the imminent End of Times, the hastening of times and final Judgment. But especially telling of the Epistle as Christian text are two symbolic clusters: the one, which applies the symbols of lamp, shepherd and fountain to the theme of eternity (77:16), stands for Jesus Christ; the other, which applies the metaphors of pitcher and well, ship and harbor, journey (or way) and city (85:10) to the theme of approaching End, stands for the Church. The Epistle's addressees are the twelve tribes. They represent the Church which saw itself as the eschatological heir of Israel's historical tribes. The Christian meanings hidden in the Epistle may well account for its remarkable popularity in the Syrian Church.

The medieval apocalyptic tradition has reinterpreted the New Testament apocalyptic and the Apocalypse of John in very different ways. In one side it has further developed the tradition of the eschatological expectation of the end of time with its upheavals and hopes. On the other hand there was another kind of apocalyptic tradition of widespread reception in the popular culture: the tours of hell. Since the New Testament Apocrypha Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul (visio pauli) - and many later Medieval visions - the interest turned to the individual fate after death and to the deceased’s place in the geography and in the society of the afterlife. Although the New Testament has given no complete image of the Otherworld its eschatological texts were understood through the glasses of this popular imagery of the afterlife. In this paper I intend to analyze how the imagery of the Otherworld – above all the imagery of hell – is artificially inserted in the account of the Apocalypse by the means of its iconic reading in Medieval Illuminated Apocalypses. In order to do that I will analyze a limited set of images of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts regarding to Apocalypse 20 and see how its images translate iconically the biblical text by the insertion of themes that were not originally there. It seems that they have their origin in the popular culture and imagery of the Middle Ages.

It has been an axiom of Ezekiel scholarship that gillûlîm, a neologism most likely coined by Ezekiel but whose etymological meaning remains uncertain, denotes images or representations of other gods. However, in a recent analysis of the Septuagint translation of gillulim, Johan Lust pointed out that only 10 of the 39 uses of gillûlîm are translated 'eidola in LXX Ezekiel, while the “standard” equivalent is 'enthumemata, “thoughts, mental images, desires.” Although Lust clearly demonstrates that the gillûlîm should not be equated with divine images, he leaves open the question of how it can denote material objects, on one hand, and mental images and desires, on the other. In this paper, I argue that the term denotes stelae on which are recorded Judah’s treaty obligations with the nations. The primary support for this argument is LXX Ezek 8:10. Unlike MT 8:10, in which engravings appear on the wall of a secret room in the Jerusalem temple, LXX 8:10 indicates that the engravings of the 'eidola of the house of Israel appear on its “worthless things.” In other contexts, the term denotes either the stelae themselves or the treaty obligations recorded on these stelae. The offense of the gillûlîm is thus not idolatry so much as it is swearing false oaths in the name of YHWH. The relentless prosecution of judgment in Ezekiel, as well as the book’s emphasis on restoring God’s honor among the nations, lends support to this interpretation. Moreover, this construal offers one possible solution toward the contradictory stances toward child sacrifice, which is divinely mandated in 20:25-26 but roundly condemned in 16:20 and 23:39. It is because Jerusalem’s leaders have violated obligations taken on in YHWH’s name that children must be sacrificed.

R. Moshe ben Nahman (Nahmanides, 1194-1270), the greatest of the Jewish sages of Spain, was a biblical commentator and a scholar of Talmud and Jewish law as well as philosophy and Kabbala. Towards the end of his life he left Spain for the Holy Land, arriving in 1267. Nahmanides' commentary on the Pentateuch was completed while Nahmanides was still in Spain, and he took it with him to Israel. Following his arrival in the Holy Land, Nahmanides introduced more than three hundred addenda to the commentary that he had composed in Spain. Some of these addenda were the result of new discoveries that he made in Israel - such as geographical phenomena, rabbinical literature that had been unknown to him, etc. Others arose from Nahmanides' reappraisal of his own interpretations. About 50 manuscripts of Nahmanides' commentary are known today. Some represent the first version, others represent the updated version, and some include a mixed version of these two versions. The addenda passages can be found by means of two "updating lists", sent from Israel to Europe by Nahmanides himself and by others. The addenda can also be found by a wide comparison of manuscripts to each other. In my lecture I will present a wide project - made by me and by Dr. Jonathan Jacobs - checking all the manuscripts and finding out the addenda and the stages of development of the commentary. The addenda will be demonstrated from the commentary of Nahmanides to the book of Numbers.

Judging by the various ways in which the phrase eis logon doseos kai lempseos (Phil 4:15) is usually translated in modern versions of the Bible as well as in commentaries, it would appear that no strong scholarly consensus has been reached yet as to its exact meaning. This paper endeavours to examine the significance of this expression and its implications for an understanding of the early church’s earliest forms of financial administration. This investigation begins with a thorough philological survey of the terms logos, dosis, and lempsis, as they appear in literary and documentary sources. The financial connotation they can sometimes adopt is illustrated by numerous examples drawn from papyri and inscriptions, such as receipts, contracts, or accounts. Attention is then focused on the rare instances in which two or even three of these terms are found in collocation. It is demonstrated that, in contrast with literary sources, hitherto neglected documentary evidence provide clear insight into the meaning of the expression and confirm that it pertains to accounting terminology. It is subsequently suggested that rather than constituting an idiom symbolizing social reciprocity within the context of friendship (contra Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 157–64; Peterman, Paul’s Gift from Philippi, 63–65; Pilhofer, Philippi, 147–52), the phrase describes in fact a financial account, a ledger similar to the customary Roman codex accepti et expensi, in which credit and debit operations were dutifully recorded. This essay concludes by evaluating the significance of this new piece of evidence for a better understanding of early Christian financial administration and missionary organisation. It is ultimately proposed that Paul must have established, in consort with the Philippian community, a kind of fund through which his missionary ventures in Thessalonica and beyond would be financed (cf. Phil 4:15–16; 2 Cor 11:8–9).

Name is an important marker of Yoruba culture. However, some of these Yoruba names have been undergoing alteration, modification and hybridization in the hands of some Yoruba Pentecostals. One of the key reasons for change of names among Yoruba Pentecostals is the evil connotation believed to be inherent in the names they bear. Many of them see the divinities and ancestors as “demons” and “territorial spirits” that are behind their life problems. The issue of foundational check up after conversion to disconnect believer from attachment to family and generational gods and curses is compulsory for every convert into Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM) and this must include the change of names that are believed to be infected with evil. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, also portrays situations of name changes, especially in relation to Jacob, one of the patriarchs. Yoruba Pentecostals have been using this as basis for the phenomenon of change of name. Hence, this paper seeks to look at the phenomenon of change of name from the view points of both the Bible and MFM, through contextual analysis, with the aim of presenting the interpretational dynamics which the Yoruba Pentecostals have brought to bear on biblical interpretation.

The Instrumental Dimensions of Ritual Violence to Corpses in Biblical Texts

Astarte, Baal and Asherah are frequently criticized in the so-called Deuteronomistic History. Although they were all well known divinities in the Ancient Near East, most Biblical authors seem to have lost contact with their real cults. This is particularly evident when we look at the youngest references to them. Whereas the earlier authors still prefer the singular, suggesting some knowledge of the ancient gods, the later authors use the plural, such as Ashtarot. They had become mere idols. One can in fact see a clear development from the singular to plural, and it can be used for dating the references. For example, this can be used to argue that the authors or editors who criticized these divinities in 1–2Kings were different from the ones who criticized these divinities in the books Joshua through 2Samuel, which undermines the unity of the Deuteronomistic History. At any rate, it is likely that all references to Astarte, Baal and Asherah derive from a situation postdating 586 BCE.

The first translation of the New Testament in Modern Greek which was held by the monk Maximos of Gallipoli (published in Geneva, 1638) under the supervision of the Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril Loukaris (1572-1633) and the Dutch Pastor Antoine Leger (1594-1661), constitued the first attempt of vulgarization of the biblical text in Greek, and most specifically in vernacular language form. This translation was based on two patterns (firstly in the New Italian New Testament translation by Giovanni Diodati / Geneva, 1608 and secondly the Textus Receptus of Desiderius Erasmus [edition of 1522]) which were followed word by word concerning the textual structure (word order, syntax, use of Old Testament references) revealing an excessive conservatism and giving priority to the transfer of the biblical message. In the frame of our communication we are going to be based in our sample wich is constitued by the translations of the four Gospels from which we aim to present and analyze in detail two examples of textual structure (the parable of the Sower [Mt 13, 1-9, Mc 4, 1-9 and 13-20, Lc 8,4-8 and 11-15] and the Miracle of the multiplication of loaves [Mt 14, 13-21, Mc 6,30-44, Lc 9,10-17 and Jn 6,1-15). In the above evangelical versets of the first New Testament translation in Modern Greek, will be examined the organization of the textual structure (syntax, semantics [paragraphs and keywords], use of Old Testament references etc) and will be analyzed the mode of the biblical message through the conservatism observed in this same translation.

The Hebrew Bible contains only a few reference to demons. Where these occur in the Prophets they are mostly confined to poetic passages where the Hebrew text is challenging. This paper will examine how Targum Jonathan deals with these passages as both translator and as exegete, and will contextualise the Targum’s handling of the Hebrew’s demonic terminology within early rabbinic Judaism. It will also ask whether the more elaborate demonology popular in Babylonian Judaism, where Targum Jonathan was edited into its official form, left its mark on the text.

Gospel of Thomas 50 speaks of "movement and repose" as the sign of the Father that must be revealed to the unnamed guardians by which one must pass. The concept is not an apocalyptic one, nor is it simply the "Gnostic" concept of anapausis described by Vielhauer. The idea, rather, comes from Middle Platonism, as will be illustrated by texts from the Timaeus, Philo of Alexandria, and the Corpus Hermeticum.

Philippians 3 contains some of Paul’s most belligerent language against his Jewish Christian “opponents”. Paul calls them “dogs” and “evil workers”, and suggests their much valued circumcision is nothing but “mutilation” – perhaps even ridiculingly suggesting it is on par with castration (3:2). In the same context Paul also launches into an extreme evaluation of his own Jewish past and Jewish identity markers in general. The aim of this presentation is to elucidate why Paul in Philippians 3 offers such a negative assessment of his Jewish identity – to the point of a complete break with Judaism. Paul’s motivations will be explicated in terms of the concept of social identity. I propose that Paul portrays himself in the passage as sharing the social identification of his Gentile addressees, and does this for two main reasons. The first motivation is that by adopting the identity of the Philippian Gentile Christians Paul enhances the positive self-esteem of this group. He raises the purportedly inferior group to a superior position by depicting himself as actively and consciously choosing to be like the Philippians rather than like the opponents who value Jewish identity markers. This move intends to dissolve any need by the Philippians to join the ranks of the opponents. Secondly, Paul is driven by a need to secure his authority in the Philippian church in a time of crisis. In order to achieve this, he portrays himself as a prototypical leader, who, by definition, optimally epitomizes the social category (that is, the so-called in-group) of which he is a member.

One of the most attractive aspects of the Book of Ruth is that it is named for a woman, and a Moabite at that! It seems almost miraculous that the Book contains no condemnation, or even criticism, of a marriage with a Moabitess. What did Naomi think of her sons' intermarriages? Did she not respond in the same way as the parents of Samson? When their son proposed marrying a Philistine woman they answered: "Is there no one among the daughters of your own kinsmen and among all our people that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?" (Judges 14:3) Intermarriage is expressly forbidden in the Torah: "When the Lord your God brings you to the land you are about to enter and possess, and He dislodges many nations before you…you must doom them to destruction…You shall not intermarry with them: do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons" (Deuteronomy 7:1-3). Indeed, in Deuteronomy we find a specific prohibition of intermarriage with Moabites: "No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord, none of their descendants, even in the tenth generation, shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:4). Centuries later, during the period of Ezra, the time of the return from exile was written in Nehemiah 13:1: "they read to the people the Book of Moses, and it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite might ever enter the congregation of God" (). In the Book of Ezra we learn that:"Ezra the priest got up and said to them, You have trespassed by bringing foreign women, thus aggravating the guilt of Israel. So now make confession to the Lord God of your fathers, and do His will and separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the foreign women" (Ezra 10: 10-11). Ruth herself is surprised by her kind reception and asks Boaz: "Why are you so kind as to single me out, when I am a foreigner?" (Ruth 2:10) The expression "foreigner" (nokhriya). There is an echo in the Book of Ruth to the story of the foreign women during the period of Ezra, who asked to separate them from his people. Yet Naomi and Boaz behave differently towards Ruth the Moabitess. How can this be explained? Does the story hint that there is a different, a positive way to relate to a foreign woman? Researchers have already suggested that the story of Ruth may be seen as an argument with the separatist concept as applied to foreign women in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Towards the end of the Book of Ruth, at the climax of the story, we learn that "Boaz married Ruth, she became his wife and he cohabited with her. The Lord let her conceive, and she bore a son" (Ruth 4:13-14). Since the marriage of Boaz and Ruth is in opposition to the caveats of Ezra and Nehemiah as to intermarriage with foreign women, can we view the Book of Ruth as a hymn of praise to Ruth, the "foreign woman"? This is not necessarily the case.

Ernest Sandeen (The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800-1930 [Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1970], p. 222) avers that the Scofield Reference Bible (edited by Rev. C. I. Scofield, D.D. [London: Oxford University Press, 1909, revised edition, 1917]) has been ‘subtly but powerfully influential in spreading [dispensationalist] views among hundreds of thousands who have regularly read that Bible and who often have been unaware of the distinction between the ancient text and the Scofield interpretation’. This paper examines the way in which this ‘subtle but powerful influence’ is partially exercised by extensive cross-referencing between notes in the Scofield Reference Bible. Acts 1:11 is a significant text for Scofield’s eschatological concepts. Starting from the notes on this single verse, I take an excursion through material offered there and in linked notes on fifteen other disparate texts from both Testaments. The notes on these sixteen verses form a complex but coherent series and reveal four of Scofield’s most common, interrelated, dispensational themes. The background theme is the basic dispensationalist notion of an eternal separation between God’s earthly and heavenly peoples, Israel and the Church, and of diverse futures for the Church, Israel and the Gentiles. The main theme is ‘the kingdom’ to be established on Christ’s return in fulfilment of the Davidic Covenant. The different natures of the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are expounded and three of the seven dispensations are introduced. The title of the paper echoes that of a famous satirical history of England, 1066 and All That, by W C Sellar and R J Yeatman, Methuen Publishing Ltd., 1930.

Contemporary evaluation of religion is often connected to the role or status of women in the respective religion. As an example, German newspapers accuse the Islam of being oppressive against women, and New Testament scholarship often pictured Jesus as the great liberator for women from oppressive Judaism of his time, ignoring the fact of Jesus being a Jew himself. The same pattern is applied to early Christian texts in modern scholarship: in this case, there is a tendency to praise „heresy“ for its women friendly attitude – and due to the large number of women to be found in heretical movements. This reading reverses the estimation of the church fathers since they did not approve the high ranking of women in heretical movements at all. At the same time, this reading is based on some polemical remarks about „women and heresy“ that are taken as historical truth. However, a closer look at the church fathers’ writings from the second and third century (as well as a consideration of the Nag Hammadi scriptures) shows that the special affiliation between women and heresy lacks its basis in those texts. All the referrence texts present more active men than women in heretical movements – and usually the women are pictured as victims of seduction rather than as active agents. The stereotype of the “heretical women” only emerges in later texts since the fourth century, especially in the writings of Epiphanius of Salamis who finally concludes in constructing heresy as a deviant female. The history and discourse of “women and heresy” should make us refrain from creating historical claims based on polemical stereotypes.

This paper provides an anthropological reading of 1 Sam 25, namely David's behaviour towards Nabal and his wife. From the point of view of Mediterranean ethnography, David in this story may be understood as a mafioso performing practices related to honour, prestige and violence. The analysis of this example attempts to present some thoughts on the usefulness of anthropological approaches a nd insights for interpreting biblical stories.

The textual material of the book(s) of Ezra-Nehemiah has been approached from several viewpoints, from the historical to the redactional, and has been recently investigated through sociological and anthropological methods. The present paper, focusing rather on intertextual biblical relationships, aims to give an answer to the following question: should the return from the exile in Ezra-Nehemiah be read as a second exodus, as a re-conquest or as a re-establishment of the status quo ante? Which pattern fits better with the texts at our disposal? After a critical assessment of previous attempts to interpret these stories as a ‘second Exodus’, the re-conquest and re-establishment patterns in Ezra-Nehemiah will then be examined. For the sake of time and space, the focus of the paper will be on the main characters of the narrative, particularly on Ezra. In that connection, the post-biblical (rabbinical and apocryphal) traditions about Ezra as a ‘second Moses’, will be compared with other possible comparable paradigms, such as Joshua (Jos 1 and 8) or Josiah (2 Ki 22-23). The appreciation of intertextual relationships with other texts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament could provide interesting hints on the socio-historical situation of the scribal circles responsible for the final redaction of the book(s). A particular emphasis will be laid on the issue of community-identity shaping as one of the implied aims of the analyzed narratives.

Very little of the sociological literature on New Religious Movements (NRMs) pays much attention to the growing numbers of charismatic Christians in the West who subscribe to some form of what has been dubbed “Third Wave Neopentecostalism” or “the New Apostolic Reformation”—the movement which has included amongst its members politicians such as Sarah Palin. This paper employs the methods of the sociology of NRMs to examine this phenomenon. It then focuses on the reception of texts like Joel 2 amongst such charismatics and explores the role of the Christian media in promoting particular readings. The final section brings the two together to suggest ways in which contemporary culture informs militarist readings of biblical texts and how such readings in turn promote the support of military action.

There are over two hundred occasions when Paul speaks of Jesus using the titles Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Lord Jesus Christ. However, ‘it is rare for Paul to say “Jesus” and nothing more.' Moreover, there appears to be a general dearth of material discussing the use of the proper name ‘Jesus’ by Paul and those scholars who make note of this rarity appear to conclude together that Paul is making a premeditated and intentional reference to the humanity of Jesus. In this paper we make a careful analysis of Paul’s use of ‘Jesus’ in Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians and 1 Thessalonians. We seek to show that this is the man Jesus of Nazareth he is referring to – as opposed to a deified Jesus or overly spiritualised Jesus – the one who lived and was crucified under the tyranny of the Roman empire and then was raised from death in a triumphant show of power counter to that which was sustained in the imperial world. We then conclude that this rare use of ‘Jesus’ may have been deliberately utilised by Paul as a significant element of his anti-imperial gospel which was itself founded upon the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

This is a joint paper by Andrés Piquer, Pablo Torijano and Julio Trebolle that analyses the text of 2Kgs 6-8 combining three different disciplines: textual criticism of the LXX and its versions, textual criticism of the Hebrew text, and literary criticism. Such an analysis contributes to a better understanding of the diversity and homogeneity of the biblical text in the context of the Qumran Library, as well as of its growth from its literary formation to its textual transmission resulting in a veritas hebraica that involves from its inception a kind of trifaria varietas. The analysis takes advantage of the contribution of the biblical and non biblical Qumran manuscripts, in particular of 6Q4, in order to study the composition and editorial process of the books of Kings. The paper focuses on cases of resumptive repetitions and instances of command lacking fulfillment or fulfillment lacking command. Reference will be made to recent studies on the practice of textual criticism and on the formation of the biblical text.

In the frame of the Persian and Hellenistic diaspora, the concepts of distance from the homeland and living abroad are important, as previously shown by the chief traditions of exodus and exile at that time compilated. In particular, the formulas of exodus (which are the verbal expressions used by MT and LXX to mean what we express with the substantive "exodus") are the ground on which the people of Israel gradually shaped his identity as people "genetically" able to survive abroad and in difficult circumstances. This paper explores the origin of these formulas in the light of my further linguistic and iconographic researches on what the Italian orientalist M. Liverani called "code of movement" and its relations with exile and return. By "code of movement" we mean a phenomenon, characterizing the literature of Syria-Palestine since the Late Bronze Age, related to the metaphoric use of verbs of movement (such as "to enter" or "to return") applied to entities that cannot move, like cities or lands, in order to identify the shift from the geopolitic sphere of influence of a certain power in favour of another. The Egyptian origin of this code will show how, within the longue durée, the collective memory can transform a diplomatic linguistic code, first related to geographic entities (cities and land), into a myth related to human entities and to a whole people, contributing to the definition of an ethnic and (often) national identity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the occurences of pepaideúmenos in Greek Sirach. When used by the translator of Sirach, this term is already of great importance in Greek culture. Indeed, since the time of Isocrates, it primarily designates citizens who have been educated so as to become active participants in the political life of their City. Occurring six times in the Greek Sirach, this term is used only once in the other books of the Septuagint (Pr 10:4), once in the New Testament (Acts 22:3), three times in Philo and three times in Josephus. The reluctance of Biblical and Hellenistic Jewish literature to use pepaideúmenos could be explained by the fact that paideúô normally relates to the Hebrew verb yasar. Contrary to classical Greek usage, it conveys in Biblical literature the nuance of chastising or disciplining. However, when we study the Hebrew manuscripts of Sirach, it also corresponds to other verbs, such as bîn and zahar. Hence, the Grandson of Ben Sira may have used paideúô according to the classical Greek usage. Furthermore, he could have chosen to use pepaideúmenos for a specific reason: he was probably encouraging his contemporaries to keep their own traditions, arguing that they were as well-educated as the Greeks. Therefore, the presentation will give an insight into how a group of Hellenistic Jews considered themselves to have been educated under another “Paideia”. The paper discusses the use of pepaideúmenos in Classical Greek as well as in inscriptions and papyri. It then analyses the occurrences of the term in Greek Sirach and finally draws some brief conclusions about how the grandson of Ben Sira in his time, faced the dominance of the Hellenistic Paideia.

In the beginning of the 1990’s, two major attempts were made to present a theology covering the whole Christian Bible: Brevard S. Childs’s Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (1992) and the three-volume work of Hans Hübner, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments (1990-1995). These works have much in common including a clear Protestant confessional starting point centered on faith and revelation and the ambition to bridge the gap between exegesis and systematic theology. On the other hand, there are significant differences in the view on the formation of the Christian canon and its influence on the Old Testament’s role in modern biblical theology: Childs insists on treating the Old Testament as a discrete witness in its own right retaining its literary, historical, and theological integrity and using the scope and text of the Hebrew Bible. For Hübner, however, it is only the Old Testament in the Septuagint version as received and interpreted by the New Testament authors, which is of importance. This paper aims to examine and evaluate these opposite concepts and discuss the function of the Old Testament in the context of the entire Christian Bible.

The character of Lot's wife begs a feminist critique. Her story in cultural context often finds itself entrenched in patriarchy and missing the alternative perspective. Using the tool of midrash, this paper seeks to engage socio-historical and feminist critiques in order to paint the narrative in a different light. Reading Genesis 19:1-26 with gender awareness looks to highlight aspects of marriage and motherhood as well as the uniqueness of God's judgment upon Lot's wife.

Matthew 4:12-9:34 (-10:42) is the first major unit of Matthew’s story of Jesus. Its theme is light shining in the darkness and for those living under the shadow of death, namely, in Galilee of the Gentiles. It ends with the rejection of Jesus as one who acts with the power of the prince of demons (Be-elzebul), whose rule is associated with victory over the Sea and Death. The disciples’ mission to the lost sheep of Israel during Jesus’ lifetime follows (9:35-10:42). This pattern parallels the first eight beatitudes in the third person plural followed by a ninth addressed to the disciples. Matthew 4:12-9:34 consists of two major units. The Sermon on the Mount (5:1-7:29) creates a new vision of the world in light of God’s coming rule. Disciples are to live within the reality of this new world. The thesis of this paper is that Matthew 8:1-9:34 provides a narrative interpretation of that vision. The people Jesus helps interprets the first beatitude: “blessed are the poor in spirit”: a leper, a Gentile, people possessed by demons, tax collectors and sinners, the woman with the flow of blood, the dead girl. Such people would be ritually unclean. The way Mathew edits the material highlights Jesus’ authority to forgive sins. In 9:1-17, Matthew follows Mark’s highly structured set of conflict stories in 2:1-3:6. While Mark includes both the issue of Jesus’ authority to forgive sins and his authority over the Sabbath, Mathew focuses the issue solely on his claim to authority to forgive sins now on earth. That raises the interesting question as to whether it is Jesus’ authority to forgive sins that is the ground of his authority fo heal, to still the sea, and to raise the dead.

Habakkuk 2:4-5 is a notoriously difficult text. A cursory glance at the text critical apparatus in BHS reveals that the status of almost every word in the Masoretic text of these two verses is questioned. The meaning of the verses, the relationship between them, and their relationship to and function in the preceding and following material in Habakkuk 2 caused much controversy. Commentaries, modern translations, and other detailed exegetical studies propose widely diverging solutions to the textual and interpretational problems presented by the two verses. Ancient Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Syriac and Latin textual witnesses are often cited as evidence for textual emendations. In this study I argue that the eclectic use of the ancient witnesses to emend the Masoretic text is problematic. On the one hand modern studies and translations by and large ignore indications of unit delimitation in the ancient texts. On the other hand ancient textual witnesses are often cited as ground for emending the Masoretic text without proper recognition of the ancient witnesses' context and translation techniques. It is argued that application of the principles of Unit Delimitation to discover the boundaries of cola, lines and larger textual units and a careful comparative and contextual reading of ancient textual witnesses might shed new light on the meaning of Habakkuk 2:4-5.

In an earlier discussion on fraternity in Paul’s letter to the Galatians its links with fictive kinship, patronage and identity concerns were considered (Punt 2012). This contribution focuses on fraternity’s intersections with gender configurations within a context of slavery. In Galatians Paul’s arguments devoted much attention to fraternal language, gender concerns (e g Gal 3:28) and slavery imagery (e g Gal 4:19-31), although the interconnections between these three aspects has so far suffered neglect in Pauline studies. Attention to the triad assists in exploring fraternity discourse while it shows upon interesting implications for Paul’s insistence upon fraternity in close concert with gender and slavery. The investigation also suggests possible motives for the way Paul deployed fraternity in Galatians.

While in traditional historical-critical exegesis the so called Korah Incident (Numb. 16-17) was considered as a prime example of classical source-criticism (e.g. J. Wellhausen), in current pentateuchal research it is predominantly treated in line with a supplementary hypothesis respectively a Fortschreibungshypothese/-modell (e.g. R. Achenbach, C. Berner). Already the opening verses of the narrative Numb. 16:1-2, where the following protagonists Korah, Dathan, Abiram and 250 Israelite men, leaders of the congregation, are peculiarly intermingled with each other, attest to a complex redactional process with multiple phases of (re-)working. The often highlighted »combinatorial« character of those opening verses is underlined by the odd mention of On, the son of Peleth (who is not mentioned in the subsequent narrative or anywhere else in the Old Testament!), and the genealogy of Dathan and Abiram, which strikingly differs from Numb. 26:8f. Interestingly enough, many of those abnormalities are often treated as variants which are covered within the textual criticism and which are not regarded as possible traces of redactional work. But the problems within the literary resp. redactional history of Numb. 16-17 cannot be solved, if the Gordian Knot in Numb. 16:1-2 is not cut. Therefore the paper offers a new approach to Numb. 16:1-2: By analyzing the textcritical variants, the highly problematic syntax and the intertextual references the literary resp. redactional history of Numb. 16-17 is reevaluated.

The creation of mankind on day six of creation is the climax of creation (Gen 1:26–31); however, there is an anomaly at this climactic moment of creation: mankind is not singled out as “good.” The anomaly is accentuated by the fact that final evaluative formula, “and God saw everything that he made, and behold, it was very good” is generally regarded as encompassing creation activities from the first day to the sixth day. This necessitates the question: why is mankind not singled out as “good” as with most of the creation activities? This paper suggests that the answer to this question rests in the dialogic relationship between the two creation narratives, Gen 1:1–2:4a and Gen 2:4b–3:24. The second creation narrative, Gen 2:4b–3:24 is for the most part a resumption of day six of creation. Contra to the commonly held views that Gen 3 describes events subsequent to the creation process and that it is thematically and materially different, this paper suggests that Gen 3 be viewed as thematically and materially related to Gen 1:26–31 and thereby providing a key as to why mankind is not singled out as “good.”

As Eusebius writes in his Demonstratio Evangelica, the opponents of the Christians tried to undermine the authority of Jesus by representing him as a swindler and magician (planos kai goês). Similarly, some of the disciples were said to have earned their living as practicing magicians, and the Scriptures could accordingly be dismissed as just another collection of magical knowledge. Through the (de)construction of the literary image of a charlatan, I will present a case study in social disparagement and exclusion. My focus will be on the development of the hostile image of the magician in the Greco-Roman culture as well as on the various negative connotations that it entailed. The rivalry between the self-proclaimed rationalists, both philosophers and medical practitioners, and the private religious specialists in the fifth- and fourth-century BC Greece gave rise to the disparaging image of the magician that also persisted in the Roman world. Magic itself was associated with secrecy and plotting, and the sorcerer was imagined to be a marginal figure, an outsider who was disengaged from the social norms. Since magic was constructed as the opposite of proper religion, it was characterized by impiety and disregard of the gods who guaranteed the prosperity of the state; hence a sorcerer could allegedly endanger the entire community. Magicians were also depicted as coming from the lower strata of the society; in other words, they had to earn their living which readily connected them to the stereotype of avaricious swindler. Thus we can see that the label of magic imposed on the Christian leaders was an efficient social stigma which could even be used to justify their executions.

A number of questions come to mind when contemplating the relationship between feminist and traditional exegesis. Is the purpose of exegesis (explicitly or implicitly) to “support” given theology, rather than create new theology? Is “feminist” liberation exegesis really offering anything more than gender concerns to the “liberation” exegesis & theology that arises from it? Is “gender awareness” the main thing that differentiates feminist exegesis from traditional exegesis? Is it good enough to stick “feminist” in front of a form of traditional exegetical methods? In this paper, I want to focus on the question: “Does feminist exegesis create a different weltanschaaung than traditional exegesis?” If it doesn’t, then it is a surprise that integration hasn’t happened. However, if it does, then the answer is obvious, integration is probably not possible, and we shouldn’t be surprised that it hasn’t happened. Feminist exegesis ultimately destroys the traditional analysis of biblical texts, and has done so since its inception. I will undertake an exegesis of Matthew 18:1-6 integrating a number of feminist methodologies. These will be compared to traditional exegeses of the passage. As a result of my exegesis, I will suggest that feminist exegesis can lead to the uncomfortable awareness that there is a need to restructure Christianity and Christianity’s conception of divinity at its core. There is nothing comforting in an exegesis that turns the world upside down and raises those kinds of questions. Traditional exegetes understand this at some level, I suspect, and give feminist exegesis no more than a token “handshake”. I suggest that to seek integration with traditional forms of exegesis would only serve to water down feminist exegesis.

For many of us, the term Bible movie conjures up the extravagance and melodrama of the Hollywood epics of the 1950s and early 1960s. How we admire the single-minded intensity of Charlton Heston’s Moses and shudder at the villainy of his exotic arch-rival, the Pharaoh Ramses II (Yul Brynner)! How we thrill to the grand passion of King David (Gregory Peck) and the lovely Bathsheba (Susan Hayward) and applaud the selfless devotion of the beautiful Moabite priestess Ruth (Ilana Eden) to her pious mother-in-law Naomi (Peggy Wood)? These films present themselves are dramatizations of stories from the Hebrew Bible that is part of the canon, and heritage of Jews and Christians alike. This paper will argue, however, that while some of their content and characters come from stories found in the Hebrew Bible, the films themselves are a vehicle for the portrayal and promotion of a distinctly American, Christian identity that has its origins in a deeply-embedded Puritan worldview. This hypothesis will be developed and demonstrated using clips from films such as David and Bathsheba (1951), The Ten Commandments (1956), Solomon and Sheba (1959), and The Story of Ruth (1960).

The seminal article for this topic is Aharon Mirsky, “Stylistic Device for Conclusion in Hebrew,” Semitics 5 (1977): 5-23 – and yet this scholarly contribution is little known in the field of biblical studies, even among those scholars who pay close attention to literary devices in the Bible. My presentation will summarize Mirsky’s work and illustrate the device with many more examples in the biblical text. In addition, attention to this element of Hebrew prose and poetry serves as a corrective to those who would emend MT, as in Lev 22:18 (with haggar ‘who dwells’ lacking; cp. 17:10, 17:13, 20:2) and Num 1:42 (with the preposition li- ‘of’ lacking; cp. the preceding tribes).

Dreams and visions play a great role among Cappodocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa. The brother of Basilius the Great reports dreams in his own family, dreams of his father and of his mother. During Basilius’ illness, his father, as he was sleeping, saw the Lord coming and saying that his son was alive. His mother, just before the birth of her daughter, had the vision of a woman who calls Macrina Thecla, announcing her virginity. Gregory himself, before his visit to his dying sister, dreamt of magnificent relics, in which he recognized her coming death. Therefore, there is a deep link between Gregory’s family and dreams. But this theme appears also when he shows its importance in the lives of saints, as he does when he describes the vision that happened to Gregory Thaumaturgus : an old man whose face is a symbol of virtue, indicates with his hand a woman who illuminates the darkness. The author recognizes among them John the Evangelist and the mother of the Lord. It results of these examples that we can see two types of visions : one which is inspired by his own family and testifies the faith of a fourth century’s great family and, indirectly, a certain form of divine election, the other which is centred on a famous figure of holiness and is linked to the hagiographical genre. The paper will focus on relationships between private lives of a family which include reports of dreams as a feature of Christian identity and the public role assumed by the great names of holiness, whose visions are reported in order to prove their influence.

This paper discusses various ways to combine cognitive and evolutionary theories with social-scientific or cultural analyses. Three recent approaches are assessed: 1) the biocultural theory advanced by Armin W. Geertz; 2) co-evolutionary theories (Richerson & Boyd, others); and 3) attempts to synthesize cognitive and social memory studies (Boyer and Wertsch). The approaches are analyzed from the perspective “explanatory pluralism” discussed by philosophers of science and the relevance of socio-cognitive theorizing for early Christian studies is reflected.

The transmission history of the story of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) has largely privileged the orderly priestly ideology with its proscription of idolatry. From its counterparts in Deuteronomy, Nehemiah, and Psalms, through Philo and subsequent Christian and Rabbinic interpretation, the story has become iconic and virtually synonymous with the theme of "sin of idolatry" and flagrant disregard for divine law and presence. Aaron's reputation as a priest in the story has fared scarcely better. However, the story world resists such a pejorative interpretative history with its more positive depiction of a community's "carnival" activities: singing, dancing, feasting, and laughing. Curiously, the transmission history of the story either marginalizes, or is unaware of the more positive social practice of carnival: the communal constellation of activities that overturns official and oppressive structures so as to bring about renewal. Moreover, the history does not reflect the positive communal aspects of singing and dancing narrated earlier in Exodus 15 and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. In this paper I propose to briefly review the transmission history of this story, and then suggest ways in which the more positive aspects of the story may be reclaimed. As a means of suggesting an alternative reading, I will blend together Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theory of carnival with Barbara Ehrenteich's work on "collective joy" and Daniel Levitin's work on the social impact of collective song. Ultimately, I suggest that the value of such an alternative reading is to perceive how the story functions positively to portray a community's response to trauma as opposed to a story that works negatively as tale of "sin and punishment." As such, questions will be raised about the world behind the production of this "carnivalized" story world of Exodus 32.

The purpose of this short lecture is to discuss the demographic evolution, the historical geography, and the organization of the Jewish community in Imperial Rome under the Julio-Claudians. Using Josephus as main source, it seems that by the middle of the first century C.E., the Jewish community of Rome probably numbered no less than 8.000 persons. Only with Augustus and the Iulio-Claudians there is a clear evidence foran organized Jewish community in Rome. Thus Augustus recognized the Jewish community as a collegia licita, with various privileges. It is possible to reconstruct, using Late Antique epigraphic sources, at least four synagogues which dates from this period, the Synagogue of the Augustans, the Synagogue of the Agrippesians, the Synagogue of the Volumnians, and the Synagogue of the Herodians. These synagogues probably stand for four different collegia. Is this an indication that there was not a single Jewish community? With Augustus reorganization of the urbs, as well as its physical development, it seems that by now most of the Jews, 8.000 circa, as attested by Josephus, lived in an area across the Tiber, Regio XIV or the the Transtiberinum, as most of the foreigners who dwelled in Augustan Rome. I shall end my lecture with a short discussion of the two possible banishments of the Jews from Rome under Claudius, in 41 and 49 C.E. Possibly part of the Jews living in Rome was expelled under various reasons. Only towards the end of the period, in the last years of Claudius rule and under Nero, the situation stabilized. It is significant that from Nero onwards, the Jews of Rome were no more threatened from expulsion during the rule of the successive emperors.

Ever since H.M. Schenke established the existence among Nag Hammadi texts of a diverse strand of Gnosticism called “Sethian Gnosticism,” scholars have in general endorsed his main views and contributed to enlarge both the list of texts included in this group and the characteristics that allegedly differentiate them from Valentinian texts (see Turner, Logan, and Layton). Recent years, however, have seen a growing reluctance regarding several aspects of the “Sethian hypothesis” (see Wisse, Williams, Luttikhuizen). The present paper proposes an oblique approach to the worldview of these texts in order to test the validity of such a hypothesis. The analysis of the anthropological framework of so-called Sethian treatises – their views on man, his origin, devolution, current condition, structure, and goal – and its comparison with standard Valentinian views will allow us to determine whether we are dealing with radically different groups or whether the differences should rather be considered individual deviations from the main line of thought.

The last few decades of scholarly discussions celebrate both “continuity” and “innovation” as designations of Persian period prophecy. But, could we set criteria to specify unique characteristics of this late sixth century literature? This paper focuses on two-oppositional relationships between early sixth century prophetic literature and Persian period biblical literature. Several case-studies illustrate the contributions of the two great prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on Persian period prophecy and historiography, and one exemplifies the contribution of the Persian period theology and ideology on the evolution of the book of Jeremiah. Based on those examples the question of 'what is “Persian” in late sixth century prophetic literature becomes even more challenging.

When Paul recites in 1Cor 8:6 the functions of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, he uses twice the emphatic hemeis. In this paper I suggest to understand the meaning of ‘we’ through the lens of the lordship of Jesus Christ. Generally modern scholars do not discuss in detail who the ‘we’ are in 1Cor 8:6 and take their own understanding for granted. I examine three meanings found in modern scholarship: ‘we’ as the fullness of creation; as humankind in general; as all the members of Christian communities. I find these positions less convincing for the context of 1Cor 8:6 since they overlook the link between the meaning of ‘we’ and the role of Jesus Christ as the Lord. In v.6 Paul uses the unprecedented combination of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. They act in unity when operating with both ‘all’ and ‘we’. Paul corrects the Corinthians’ recognition of the one God (v.4) and points to the unique functions of the ‘one Lord’. He presents the role of the Lord in v.6 as not merely instrumental, but determinative: the Lord Jesus Christ determines who comes through Him back to God the Father and who does not. This has a practical application: the lack of the understanding of the Lord’s role, which seems to be the case in Corinth (v.7), may result in sinning against Christ (v.12) and therefore in a destructive destiny (v.11). One can draw a parallel with 1Cor 10:1-10 where a distinction of ‘we’ from ‘all’ is also presented. Thus I suggest that the ‘we’ in 1Cor 8:6 designates not the members of the Christian communities as such but only those of them who recognize the determinative role of Jesus Christ as the only true Lord and behave according to this recognition.

During the last decades interest in patristic interpretation of the New Testament has increased tremendously. This can be seen in the publication of series such as Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, The Church’s Bible, Novum Testamentum Patristicum, and Blackwell Bible Commentaries. Several volumes of the Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament also contain short surveys of patristic interpretation. These series reflect numerous individual studies on particular passages or books of the New Testament in early Christian interpretation. This paper deals with the question what scholars do or should do, and according to which method, when they select, describe, and analyze the church fathers’ interpretations. They may intend to relativize the result of historical-critical exegesis, or look for relevant philological and grammatical observations, or for patristic confirmation of modern interpretations, or only describe ancient interpretations as such, or also try to relate them to the context of the interpreters and thus to clarify the historical reasons of particular ancient exegeses. Patristic interpretation may sometimes seem to be used as a huge lucky-bag of exegeses that can be either selected or neglected depending on present-day interests. Although valuable studies on methodology have been published already (e.g. by Schelkle [1957], Torrance [1988/1995], Mitchell [2000], Childers [2003], Harmon [2003], Decock [2005]), the present author, who has been researching patristic interpretation of Scripture since more than thirty years, will propose his own methodological reflections on this sort of research.

This paper looks at how the Tower of Babel becomes a facilitator of biopolitics. The Jewish historian, Josephus, writing in the first century of the Common Era, is the first to turn the story into one about proper modes of governance. The political ideals that Josephus conveys in his version—drawn from Greek and Roman ideals of governance and self-control—can also be heard in U.S. partisan politics, from Republican tea party to Democratic big tent. Allusions to the Babel story, shaped in its reception by Josephus, invariably mobilize the opinions about self-indulgence at the same time that they debate the role of government, the role of family, and the relationship between liberty and equality in democracy. Though these opposing political positions disagree on many points, they all end up looking a little like Josephus’s theocracy. Eschewing radical equality, but holding onto a republican democracy, both sides of the partisan divide require faith in the Jewish or Christian God and heteropatriarchal sexual regulation of the family. Faith and sexual regulation work together to secure family lines of inheritance, so that the biopolitical subject of interest can secure the free flow of capital within a class hierarchy. This chapter draws on the work of French philosopher Jacques Rancière (2006) on a certain conservative hatred of radical equality in democracy.

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What is a crucifixion? A simple yet crucial a question. Numerous monographs, articles, dictionaries, and commentaries, which deal with Jesus or the Gospels, offer answers to the question. It does not take more than a glimpse to find a full blown and colorful depiction of the crucifixion punishment in general and the crucifixion of Jesus in particular. It does not matter whether the author is, e.g., conservative, evangelical, liberal, progressive, or agnostic. They all elucidate in detail what a crucifixion is. But from where do they acquire their knowledge? In my book Crucifixi on in Antiquity I have argued for that the ancient texts, New Testament included, are not possible to use as support for such knowledge. A common objection is that the sought information is to be found in later Christian texts. These are in focus in the present paper, in which I will argue for that these also the later Christian texts are insufficient when it comes to deliver such information about the crucifixion punishment. The information that could be acquired from these post-Biblical sources appears not to match the vast information the scientific contributions offer.

Many studies about the Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern legal texts demonstrate that the ordering of the laws in the ancient sources raises questions. Present-day readers have the impression that the ancient law books skip from one subject to another, and modern scholars suggest that the enigmatic ordering of these texts may be due either to the gradual and somewhat inconsiderate addition of new laws to older collections, or to ancient ordering principles that differ considerably from the structuring rules that we apply today. In this paper I will show that it is useful to study the way the ancient scribes structured their legal texts by means of visible delimitation markers, such as stripes and blank spaces. The delimitation markers in the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, for instance the Book of the Covenant, and in the extra-biblical legal texts, such as Codex Hammurapi, will be compared with the way modern scholars explain the ordering of these ancient sources.

Almost thirty years ago, when I had just started to study the Fourth Gospel, at the beginning of a paper, I wrote: “Now, studies of the Fourth Gospel are in the melting pot of methods.” This basic situation has become more complex over time. The same can be said of scholarship of the Fourth Gospel in Japan as that in the world. But we Japanese have not been able to develop much new methodology. In a sense, it is very natural because biblical scholarship is a minor research field in here, where there is a mere 1% Christian population. On the other hand, it seems that the traditional historical-critical method is still very pervasive in Japanese biblical scholarship. Why does the methodology of biblical studies in Japan seem to be stagnant? One of the reasons is, of course, the small number of biblical scholars. But another, more important reason why biblical research featuring new methods hasn’t flourished in Japan has some relationships with the particular position of Japanese biblical scholarship in its academic fields; it absolutely insists on HISTORICAL studies. In Japan, Christians are a minority group and only a few people are religiously or PRACTICALLY interested in the Bible. Consequently, in Japanese society, very few posts at academic institutions for biblical scholars exist. Overall, we Japanese have very little necessity for biblical scholars and even less for scholars of the Fourth Gospel. For usual non-Christian Japanese, in particular, educated people, the Bible is important only as one of the historical relics of Western culture. Especially from the academic viewpoint, scholars are only interested in its historical kowledge at best, namely, whether it is historically accurate or not. This emphasis on historical validity is not a problem of methodological relevancy, but an academico-sociological one.

The book of Jeremiah includes only three vision report narratives: 1:11-16 (two visions); 24:1-10; and 38:21-23. The almond rod, seething pot and baskets of figs in the first two passages may have been concrete objects, visible to anyone nearby, but employed as visual aids to symbolize the content of the accompanying oracle. The vision report in Jeremiah 38, however, claims a view of the future, and includes sound and action. The book of Jeremiah uses the common verb, r’h, in the vision reports, while the verb, hzh, is entirely absent from the book. The technical term, hazon, “vision,” appears in Jeremiah only to name the lying visions from other prophets’ own minds (Jer 14:14; 23:16). Various commentators since David Kimchi in the twelfth century have also labelled other units in Jeremiah as visions, even though they lack a vision report framework and technical terminology. This paper will examine examples of these implied visionary passages in light of the uses of the verb r’h throughout the book and with reference to changing rubrics for the identification of prophetic visions.

At the Institut fuer neutestamentliche Textforschung (Muenster) we are currently developing a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) the so-called “New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room 2.0” (NT.VMR 2.0). It is aimed at presenting images, a checklist and other resources to study New Testament manuscripts online. In my presentation I will discuss the concept of this tool, its intended scope and the services we offer. Special attention will be given to responses from the audience that can help us to improve our service.

Reimarus' (1694-1768) contribution to the rise of historical Bible critique and the "historical Jesus" is considered uncontroversial; likewise, the beginning of Jesus-narratives is generally marked much later, with Ernest Renan's "Life of Jesus" (1863). This paper however, will, besides Reimarus, focus on Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), best known as the third President of the USA, and his New Testament edition composed in 1819/20 under the title of "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", but published not until 1904 and become famous as the "Jefferson Bible". Jefferson had been Ambassador to France at the eve of the French Revolution (1789) and he returned back to his home country inspired by Marianne's liberal, democratic, revolutionary, but also anti-clerical ideas. His appreciation of Jesus for his outstanding morals complemented his contempt for the church. Therefore, in some ways on a similar vein as Reimarus in Germany, he composed a New Testament edition of his own. Jefferson made few, if any, concessions on historical grounds like Reimarus had done. Rather, to the largest part his considerations were pragmatic and political, and resulted in a "narrative", rather than a "history". This paper will explore background, methodology, aim and result of Jefferson's New Testament in contrast to Reimarus' work, and will inquire how Jefferson's "Life of Jesus" can be considered an early specimen of novellistic Jesus-narrative and how it relates to the rise of the "historical Jesus".

Generating Communitas in War-related Ritual Acts

A discovery of several Punic ship's rams (rostra) on the Mediterranean sea floor has recently been made in Sicily, under the Egadi Islands Survey Project Co-Directed by Jeffrey G. Royal (Archaeological Director of RPM Nautical Foundation) and Sebastiano Tusa (Archaeological Superintendent of Trapani). One ram carries a Punic inscription. The artifacts are probably from the last sea battle of the First Punic War, which took place in 241 B.C.E. The inscription, which is undergoing reading and interpretation, will prove to be a significant addition to the corpus of extant Punic. Schmitz will offer a preliminary reading and interpretation of the inscription. Bibliography: http://rpmnautical.org/ramsgallery.html Andrew Curry, "The Weapon That Changed History," Archaeology 65, no. 1 (January/February 2012) http://www.archaeology.org/1201/features/sicily_rome_carthage_navy_rams.html Tusa, S. and Royal, J., 2012, "An Ancient Naval Battle Landscape in Sicily," Journal of Roman Archaeology 25, forthcoming.

The Arabic manuscripts of the New Testament suffered from a comparative lack of interest in Western research: even today this field is barely investigated by textual criticism. This can be explained by the history of the NT textual criticism, which focused on finding the original text and showing little interest in the "secondary" versions of the NT. Furthermore the study of the Arabic manuscripts of the NT refers to issues of types of cultural and postcolonial studies and requires a transversal and interdisciplinary approach that leads us to think about identity and dialogue at the intersection of the so-called “religions of the Book”. However, new interest is emerging for these manuscripts: this interest is not unrelated to the present revolutions in the NT textual criticism which the digital age and the Internet make possible. The Internet supports and contributes to a renewed study of our manuscripts at several levels. First, the various issues that crystallize the Arabic manuscripts - were there any Arab Christian writings before Islam, what priority, what integrity of Arab Christian and Arab Muslim texts? - are reflected in the Internet, often with polemics: the sphere of the Internet opens up a space for a new form of discourse, where the NT manuscripts raise intercommunity and interreligious questions. Then, on another level, it should be noted that the Internet platforms for collaborative work, such as the Yahoo Forum Textual Criticism http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism, give birth to many new contributions concerning the Arabic manuscripts; this new type of work allows progress in our field, which demonstrates more broadly the importance of such research for the discipline. My paper wants to show how the Internet and the digital framework encourage research around the Arab tradition of the NT through maybe unexpected ways and to analyze these new productions.

Within the overall structure of the Patriarch stories in Genesis, researchers generally differentiate among three cycles: the Abraham Cycle, the Jacob Cycle and the Joseph Cycle. Isaac, however, has not received comparable treatment within a cycle of stories dedicated to his life events; the stories that do involve him are included in the Abraham or Jacob cycle. One of the main reasons for this is the absence of Toledot formulae for Abraham. Many scholars claim that these formulae function as either headings for genealogical lists or titles for narrative accounts about the descendants of the father whose name appears in the formula. The small amount of material that deals with Isaac and his similarity to Abraham strengthens the perception that there is no Isaac Cycle. I would like to propose a new way to understand the Toledot formulae. According to this understanding, the Toledot formulae may open a section that deals not only with the sons of the father under discussion but also with the father himself, as we see in the Toledot of Noah (6:9) and Isaac (25:19). In addition, I will argue that we can apply to the Patriarch stories in Genesis the principle of dynamic boundaries from reader-response criticism, by which the boundaries of a literary unit are set according to the questions readers want to ask, and according to the perspective of those considering it. According to these principles, I would like to identify and delineate a literary unit to be termed the narrative of Isaac in Genesis. I will examine the coherence, unifying themes, and literary characteristics of this unit. In light of this reading, I will offer a new interpretation of certain events described in this unit and a new perspective of the character of Isaac.

Many scholars have noted the strong parallelism between the two quite different miracles of the Wedding in Cana and the healing of the royal official’s son. There is also clear parallelism in the intervening section of text. Jesus discusses the destruction of the temple and the necessity of being born of the Spirit in Jerusalem, and later discusses living water and the replacement of the Jewish and Samarian places of worship in Samaria. There are also two discussions on the theme of coming from above as opposed to coming from below: one with Nicodemus and one by John the Baptist. This multiple parallelism forms a simple chiastic structure that invites a meditation on the interconnected themes of death, resurrection, and the coming of the Spirit for both Jesus and the believer.

In ancient Mesopotamia, congenital disability was not the fault of the individual or of his parents but of the mischievous workings of the god who created mankind. Where possible, some job was found that could be performed so as to allow for a productive life. In addition, certain diseases and/or types of trauma were known to cause disability. In this paper, we will examine three areas in which it was possible for the ancient physician to prevent or treat disability: setting broken bones, treating eye and ear diseases, and alleviating the symptoms of tinnitus.

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It seems clear from everything written about her and Ahab that she brought to a fairly backward state of Israel the international connections and administration that made the Northern Kingdom of 'Beit Omri' the powerhouse it became in the area: an example of prosperity, globalizedeconomy, military security (such as there was), and religious pluralism (such as there was). I want to examine her background and influences that helped raise Israel into international prominence, and produced such confrontations with the conservative prophet Elijah's approach to nationalism internationalism and deity. If there's time I shall also try to evaluate the loss to Israel of her overthrow by Jehu and hisslaughter of what Baal supporters Elijah failed to wipe out on Mt Carmel, and what Gd does and does not do to save the State.

This study wishes to present the use of alternating description in biblical narrative. While the use of juxtaposition between narratives for the purpose of analogy is well attested, the use of alternating description in biblical narrative has yet to be fully appreciated and understood. Alternating description involves the constant alternation between different elements within one narrative or between two seemingly different storylines that, although separate, are textually intertwined. The study will display three substantially different examples of the use of this sophisticated literary technique. One example will display the use of the technique in a small literary unit from the narrative recount of the birth of Jacob and Esau (Gen 25). A second example will be from the longer narrative of the Rise of Samuel and the Fall of the House of Eli (1 Sam 2-4). A third example will be from the extended narrative cycle of David's Accession and Saul's Demise (1 Sam 27 – 2 Sam 1). Commentators have noted the alternations between storylines but have usually explained them from diachronic perspectives as an outcome of the splicing of different narratives or the desire to display simultaneity of events. Our presentation will attempt to show that this technique is a sophisticated extension of the use of juxtaposition for the purpose of analogy. The study will show the literary logic and underpinnings of alternation of description and stress its advantages in the formation of a literary analogy. The study will claim that appreciation of the use of alternating description is often the key to the appreciation of the structure as well as message of biblical narratives.

The digitization project of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) was initiated as part of the Israel Antiquities Authority's (IAA) conservation efforts to preserve them for future generations. From the time of their discovery by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947, until the establishment of the IAA's DSS conservation lab in 1991, the scrolls were heavily damaged by the ravages of time, as well as previous handling and treatment. The task of conservation and preservation of the scrolls continues to be an ongoing mission due to their extreme fragility and the need to make use of the most up-to-date conservation methods known worldwide. We have been following a protocol drawn together with world experts, but since we have been practicing for over 18 years we decided it is time to reassess our work, and address unsolved issues. The idea to use spectral imaging for monitoring the well being of the scrolls was first suggested a few years ago. Eventually the project developed into an overall undertaking whereby we mean to monitor their physical condition, and to expand and facilitate access to them, to scholars and the public worldwide. The digitization project will thus sustain the scroll's preservation by creating high-quality spectral images, using the most advanced and innovative technologies available. These will support and provide active conservation assessments, non-invasive testing and monitoring tools, and a better record and documentation of the state of the scrolls. Further more the IAA has decided to make these highest resolution images, accompanied by data including transcriptions, translations, commentaries and bibliography available and accessible via the internet to all, as well as to provide for scholarship by supplying interactive tools within a supportive research framework, Uploading the images and data to the internet and allowing diverse searches will be achieved with the assistance of Google-Israel.

We intend to discuss the circulation in the 17th century of millenarian proposals based on Fifth Monarchy ideas, i.e., the prophetical-political formulations derived from the interpretations of the Book of Daniel's dreams. The main purpose is to trace the debates, relations and connections amongst Fifth-Monarchy Men, English and American millenarians, messianic members of the Portuguese-Jewish Community in Amsterdam, and Portuguese Fifth Empire believers, divided in sebastianists and joanists. Even with different religious beliefs (Catholic, Puritan, Jewish), there was still room for dialogue and discussions among some of those prophecy's interpreters, wich surpassed interdictions or prohibitions in their own countries. The Netherlands, in this sense, emerged as a possible vortex of a network wich articulated messianic and eschatological hopes of diverse places such as Portugal, England and the Americas. One example was the trajectory of the short treatise Esperança de Israel. It was written by Menasseh Ben Israel, printed in Spanish and Latin (1650) and short after translated in English and published by the Fifth-monarchist Livewell Chapman. If it is true that the rabi´s text has relations with the “Esperanças de Portugal”'s title, a letter written by Antonio Vieira in 1659, one can wonder how this relation was entangled in a more broader spectre in which the Marquis of Nise's embassy in French sought the support aswell the conversion of Amsterdam´s Jewry. Conversely, one can ask in wich sense Israel's treatise was indeed only a response to John Duries' and Nathanael Holmes' questions about the veracity of Montesinos' narrative. If ones assumes the Esperança de Israel's linkages (with Vieira and joanists aswell with protestants millenarians) as a plausible way to understand Seventeenth Century messianism, it is possible to draw a picture connecting Vieira's and joanists' prophetical propositions with English Fifth-Monarchists projects, even through thin and indiciary lines.

This paper deals with a speaker’s use of the words or thoughts of others in communication. This principle which is widespread but frequently unrecognised underlies our use of metaphor and irony as well as being prominent in creating humour. Greek signals this in various ways, not all of which are generally recognised by exegetes of the biblical text. Identification of such representation in the source text is crucial for accurate exegesis, but the modern focus on identity of representation rather than resemblance often hinders such identification. Recognising the part representation plays, we will deal with the following issues in this paper: Speech boundaries, representation marked by the article "to", representation not morphologically marked, echoing speech with a distancing attitude, ironic utterance. Examples of these will be draw from Mark, Matthew and the Corinthian correspondence

Most of the time, scholars who have to discuss critical issues about the Book of Numbers quote a famous sentence by Martin Noth in his commentary on the book: “If we were to take the Book of Numbers on its own, then we would not think so much of ‘continuous sources’ as of an unsystematic collection of innumerable pieces of tradition of very varied content, age, and character (‘Fragment Hypothesis’).” Noth adds a second idea that has proved very fruitful in recent years, namely, that one finds in Numbers very late Priestly texts (or post-priestly texts; Numbers 5). Julius Wellhausen, however, had a very different idea on the same topic, but he is almost never mentioned. Here is his statement: “It is an established fact that the sources Q [the Priestly Writer] and JE continue after Genesis up into the Book of Joshua. It is also proven that, in the book of Exodus and in the following books, JE is an independent source and not a complement to Q [the Priestly Writer]. This is even much clearer in this case than in the Book of Genesis. [...] Had source criticism started with the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers instead of starting with the Book of Genesis, the so-called Complement Hypothesis would have never come to be.” In recent years, much has been said about the Book of Numbers, but it seems that this antithesis permeates many of the studies on this relatively neglected book. We will try to show this with the help of some clear examples, from L. Schmidt, H. Seebass, or B.A. Levine up to Th. Pola and R. Achenbach.

”Look! Two mighty dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared loudly.” Greek Ester 1:5 The dragon is a symbol of power, a magical power or power that is bigger than life. It can come as an omen or a challenge. And as a mythical symbol it is strong. Dream symbol meanings are different for each person and therefore it is important to consider both personal meaning and context. In this paper I hope to present this symbolic dream through a psychoanalytic lens, thus presenting the symbol of the dragon.

In this paper, Pss 9 and 10 are read together from a literary, post-exilic perspective, arguing that the construct of the “enemy” in this composition primarily serves to strengthen the position of the righteous. It seems that a variety of strategies are employed in this composition to establish dichotomic-ideological categories. This results in the formation of a polarity between Yahweh and the enemy on the one hand and the righteous and the enemy on the other. This seems to have been a technique through which the author or authors of this composition sought to break free from their current social experience in order to create a new, just and fair reality for the righteous.

The “rediscovery” of ritual in early Christian studies, often by sociologically and anthropologically informed scholarship, has rightly foregrounded the importance of rituals, such as baptism, (Eucharistic) meal fellowship, circumcision, etc. Simultaneously, there is an ongoing debate as to the meaning of early Christian rituals, also for contemporary theological discussions. In the context of these two discourses, a recurring issue is how a “theology” or a “meaning” can be found in or deduced from a ritual. This also concerns rituals which receive verbal interpretation, such as the “Last Supper” and early Christian meal praxis. At this background, this paper discusses how rituals “make meaning” or “embody a theology.” It draws on insights from ritual studies and the sociology of religion, in order to further the discussion on this subject in early Christian studies. As a test-case, the framework and methodology that will be developed in the paper will be applied to the meal traditions occuring in 1 Cor. 11:17-34. It will be shown, how, when it comes to the analysis of the interpretation of rituals, and specifically with regard to early Christianity, the verbal interpretation of a ritual (if available) and the physical rite itself, seen at the background of on the one hand the broader cultural context and of, on the other hand, the specific tradition of the community performing the ritual, need to be taken into account, while it is of the utmost importance to keep in mind the history of reception of texts, in order to be aware of, and if possible avoid, reading back contemporary discussions into ancient texts, but rather to allow them to speak for themselves as much as possible and in that way be interlocutors for contemporary discourses.

The present paper will examine the background of the image of Yahweh's face in the Priestly Blessing against the background of iconographic representations of deities on West Semitic amulets from the Iron Age. I will argue that the inclusion of such imagery in the Priestly Blessing may have been influenced in part by the practice of placing images of deities alongside inscribed blessings on metal amulets during the Iron Age. A comparison of the Ketef Hinnom amulets with these other amulets may indicate that the expression of Yahweh's shining face on the amulets reflects an Israelite adaption of such iconographic tendencies in West Semitic amuletic traditions.

The paper will employ the artwork God the Voyeur by Diek Grobler (2008) as a heuristic key to understand current white embodiment in South African religious discourse. The androgynous bodily features of the deity are in stark contrast to the fierce figure of YHWH in the Book of Joshua. The distance between the deity and the earth in the artwork plays on theistic presentations of gods, a mode of presentation that has become problematic within the Afrikaans Reformed theological tradition. The paper will be structured as follows: following (a) the discussion of God the Voyeur, the paper will put (b) the power of whiteness as a socio-political marker of the body in South Africa and (c) the colonial employment of the Christian deity on the table. The paper will then proceed (d) to explore the crisis of the depiction of the YHWH in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Joshua) and will conclude with (e) a discussion for the need for an ethics of interpretation by which colonial constructions of the deity can be deconstructed in order to decolonise the European white body in Africa.

As a child, I was fascinated by the story of baby Moses whose biological mother had left him at the edge of a river before he was rescued by a Princess. His story in Exodus 2 reminded me of my own life story since I too had been given up by my own biological mother as a baby, albeit for a different reason (I was a female child in a boy-obsessed culture), and I had also been adopted by a single woman. Today, as a female biblical scholar of Peranakan descent (a particular South-east Asian ethnicity), bred in postcolonial Singapore and currently living as an ‘Other’ in New Zealand and France, it is Moses’ sister – identified as Miriam in Numbers 26:59 - who captures my empathy and my postcolonial imagination despite appearing in only three verses. Whilst this paper initially started out as an ‘Empathy’ reading undergirded by a theory of focalization, due to the fact that a large part of my personal ‘empathy’ is informed by my postcolonial experiences, this analysis now has significant (post)colonialist overtones. For instance, I recognize aspects of my postcolonial self in Miriam’s deliberately deferential tone when she addresses Pharaoh’s daughter (verse 7), and interpret it as a necessary strategy of the ‘Sleeping Dog’ (à la Honoré de Balzac), so appropriate in a political landscape shaped by (in her case, Egyptian) imperialism. From my space of liminality, I also discern that Miriam mimics her colonial mistress when she speaks, and I see this as her way of slyly destabilizing the ‘superior’ status identity imposed by the colonizer. In short, the (post)colonial framework of our realities contributes to the ‘similarity bias’ in my proposed Empathy reading. To put it another way, I am better able to empathetically imagine and understand the lived space of Miriam under Egyptian colonial rule as I read it inter-contextually with my own.

This paper will revisit the question of the placement of the Tent of Meeting unit in Exodus 33 and its role in the Elohistic (E) source of the Torah. It will argue that the pentateuchal compiler displaced Exod 33:6b-11 from its original position in E, where it followed Exod 34:29* and preceded Num 11:11. Its position in Exod 33:6b-11 mimics in part its original position in E, even as, by displacing this unit, the compiler fundamentally reorients Exod 33:6b. What the compiler accomplishes through this displacement is a serialization and thus reconciliation of the Priestly and Elohistic Tents of Meeting in the combined narrative.

According to Jeremiah 32 Jeremiah buys a field in Anathot, in the area of Benjamin, while the prophet is held in captivity and Jerusalem is besieged by the Babylonians. The purchase is interpreted and reinterpreted in the chapter, and geography plays an important role in these narratives. In this paper I want to discuss the role of geographical orientations in Jer. 32. I understand the book of Jeremiah, and chapter 32 within that book, as a form of collective memory, containing overlapping, conflicting dominant and counter narratives, in which transformation takes place again and again. Crucial to the development of the book of Jeremiah was the context of tensions and group conflict in the Judean society resulting from the threat of the Babylonians, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the deportations of groups of Judeans to Babel. A ‘Jeremianic debate’ took place in which each of these groups expressed their identity in interplay with the Jeremianic tradition, often exclusively identifying themselves as the heirs of the tradition, therewith claiming authority and land. At some point in the period in which the book of Jeremiah took shape, Benjamin, that used to be part of Israel, became part of Judah. In the book of Jeremiah we find hints of Judean-Benjaminite tensions- the prophet originates in Anathot, Benjamin, and announces doom to the royal house, the people of Judah and Jerusalem and the temple.

Psalm 107 does frequently appear in the New Testament - in allusions and quotes. But that is not all one can say about the "ever present" presence of this Old Testament text in the New Testament. Because this Psalm creates a true "Wunderpartitur" (magical score) [G.St.], with references to the numerous rescue scenarios, it might have taken a large-scale effect on the synoptical tradition, being a traditional back-ground text. In a Canonical Reading there are still other forms of "presence" to reflect upon. - The given example shows the necessity to capture the relationship of the Old and the New Testament in a variety of different ways.

Hannah’s Song of Praise as a Paradigm for the Canticle of the Virgin

In Biblical Hebrew poetry the common bipartite line-form is sometimes varied to become tripartite, producing lines commonly designated ‘tricola’. Studies of the form or function of tricola have been limited in their value by inconsistent or ambiguous approaches to the colometry of the text. Reviews of theories of colometry have found the accentual rhythmical approach to provide the most consistent and reliable analysis. The influence on most scholars working with this approach can be traced back to Eduard Sievers’ analysis. His principles of colometry can be nuanced by the adoption of numerical limits on words and syllables that are commensurate with several other approaches, in order to provide an explicit and consistent basis for assessing the colometry of Hebrew poetry. A careful reading of Sievers’ theory reveals an important detail that identifies a six-stress tripartite line as rhythmically equivalent to a six-stress bicolon. In the context of accentual rhythmical analysis, this carries significance for the prosodic interpretation of a six-stress tripartite line. It suggests that such a line, although tripartite, is not strongly distinguished from the conventional bicola alongside which it is usually found. It therefore requires careful distinction from a typical full tricolon, which has eight or more stresses, and which does stand out rhythmically and functionally from neighbouring bicola. Recognising this nuance of the analysis of Sievers, it is proposed to designate a six-stress tripartite line as a ‘para-tricolon’.This term is adopted to suggest a line that appears to be a tricolon, but should not be fully regarded so. Further analysis of the structure of psalms within which para-tricola and tricola occur indicates that clear differences are apparent between the form and function of para-tricola and those of tricola.

In this paper I will look at Ezekiel’s system of access to different parts of the temple and compare this system with the equivalent system of temple enterers found in contemporary Babylonia. It appears that Ezekiel imagines a system that is similar in intention, albeit at a much smaller temple than the main Mesopotamian ones. This can be read as supporting the view that Ezekiel has been inspired by the Babylonian context in which the book was conceived. I will combine this with the observation that the position of the nasi’ and the general imaginary design of the temple also appears to point to this conclusions. This indicates that in spite of a keen awareness of the ethnic and religious background of its priests and cult personnel as not foreign, in the book of Ezekiel we are faced with a fine example of the effects of acculturation in general and the effect of Babylonian cult and culture on post-exilic Judaean religion.

In recent years there have been a number of attempts to explain the structure and meaning of Psalms 15–24 (Auffret; Hossfeld/Zenger; Miller; Brown), generally understood to be the second of four “sub-collections” constituting the first book of the Psalter. While there is a consensus that the Psalms have been chiastically arranged according to their genre, there is still disagreement concerning the logic undergirding this arrangement. How do the parts relate to each other in the final form of the text? What is the function of this particular mode of arrangement? This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by highlighting and interpreting four elements of the composition that have not yet received their proper due: 1) The manner in which the content of each psalm is “expanded” and “brought forward” in its chiastic parallel; 2) the nature of the relation between the framing Psalms (15; 19; 24) and those that intervene; 3)the identity of David as “author” of the Psalms; and 4), the significance of Zion as the horizon for interpreting the meaning of these Psalms. In short, I argue that the editors were concerned to situate David within his true theological context.

In this paper I suggest that the concept of ‘Sacrifice’ unifies many of the narratives in Judges. Sacrifice includes several central elements: (a) the sacrificial animal; (b) cutting, dividing, and other preparations; (c) the act of sacrificing itself (e.g. burning); (d) the location of the act: the altar, a temple, a sacred tree; (e) the priests, officiating at the sacrifice; (f) the party bringing the sacrifice; (g) the deity for which the sacrifice is intended. I propose to acknowledge that many of the narratives of Judges treat the human body as if it were an animal intended to be sacrificed. For instance: the Levite’s concubine is cut into pieces (Judg. 19); Jephthah’s daughter is dedicated to god by her father (ch. 11:30-40); Adoni-Bezek’s fingers and toes are cut off (ch. 1:6). Though the notion of the dismembered body has been thoroughly discussed by scholars (Bal, Bryson), it has been dealt with from the perspectives of gender studies and socio-theological analyses. Here, however, I wish to treat it from a literary point of view, as part of the overall concept of Sacrifice, which contributes to the coherence of the book. In addition, attention is directed to the recurrent burning of cities and people, appearing in Judges as analogous to a burnt offering (e.g. 1:8, 9:20, 49, 12:1, 14:15, 18:27, 20:48); The importance of a proper sacrificial site and officiating priest is examined in the Micah narrative (chs. 17-18). Some explicit descriptions of sacrifice in Judges are also considered. Attending to sacrifice as a unifying theme, it exposes to the reader the interest of the narrators in this concept, which is an essential element in the priestly way of life.

Recent studies have called for a reexamination of the relationship between early piyyut and esoteric genres of ancient Jewish literature such as Hekhalot and magical texts—genres that extend biblical notions of creation and heavenly liturgy far beyond their scriptural boundaries. These studies draw on newly discovered examples of the Avodah and Seder Beriyot, as well as the poems of Yannai, and examine them for parallels and affinities with Hekhalot literature, magical handbooks and incantations, and cosmological midrashim. Angels figure prominently in all of these literatures as members of the celestial retinue and as intermediaries between the divine and human worlds. At the same time, recent studies have prompted new ways of thinking about angels and demons as they function in cultures as diverse as modern Greece and sixth-century Italian monasticism. These studies emphasize the literary and rhetorical dimensions of the genres in which descriptions and calls to angels and demons appear. They thus direct our attention to the multitude of functions that angels and demons fulfill in those cultural contexts. This paper will build on this research by examining the functions of angels in the early Avodah piyyutim, the Seder Beriyot, and cosmological and angelological sectors of other genres of piyyutim in comparison with selected passages from Hekhalot, magical, and cosmological literatures from late antiquity. This study will suggest ways to go beyond conceptions of angelic beings in these literatures as fully defined personae with stable characteristics. It will be argued that when we are aware of the scribal, ritual, and rhetorical contexts in which they appear, our literary-historical work can lead to a more complex view of their functions.

Presenting an adequate exegesis of 2 Cor 3:18 is a puzzling task. It has to account for many interacting variables, such as the particular understanding of transformation, the exact meaning of hemeis pantes, and the significance of the unveiled face. Moreover, a clear understanding of 2 Cor 2:14-4:6 cannot do without a lucid treatment of 2 Cor 3:18 that is central to the argumentation of this text unit. This paper maintains that anakekalymmeno prosopo ten doxan kyriou katoptrizomenoi has to be understood as the unveiled face that reflects the glory of the Lord. Thus the paper will manage to present both a clear exegesis of 2 Cor 3:18 and to elucidate its function in its broader literary context. If anakekalymmeno prosopo is understood as a shining face, the expression is not only related to Moses’ countenance that is described in 2 Cor 3:7, but is likewise connected with Christ’s face, as articulated in 2 Cor 4:6. The paper clarifies how 2 Cor 4:6 both enlightens the meaning of 2 Cor 3:18 and connects the line of thought of this third chapter to the argumentation in 2 Cor 4:7-15, which deals with the embodied manifestation of the crucified and resurrected Christ. Accordingly, the paper sheds new light on the meaning of metamorphosis as a gradual process and on the significance of hemeis pantes as the agents of the embodied proclamation in 2 Cor 3:18.

It is inevitable that readers are drawn to the latter chapters of the book of Judith where the female protagonist arose to her role as assassin to deliver her people. Targumims and medieval writings as well, cannot but tend to neglect most, if not all of the contents in the first seven chapters. It is indeed strange that if the first seven chapters intend to function simply as an introduction to the story, the amount of space given to it seems to be overbearing for this little charming novel. Toni Craven (1983) has demonstrated in a brilliant way how literary balance is maintained between the first seven chapters and the rest of the book. However, besides this literary balance, in what way can these chapters be otherwise relevant to the whole story about Judith? While these first seven chapters in the book of Judith have been correctly deemed “ahistorical” in scholarship, I would proffer an interpretation which considers the significance of their historicity and why they should be treated with equal importance to the second part of the story where Judith is the star. This presentation will deal with 3 points which are crucial features in the first seven chapters: the role of Nebuchadnezzar and Holofernes; Bethulia as the primary and major location of the story; and the function of the wars, culminating in Bethulia.

Jes 52,13-53,12 deals with the new light in which the servant of god appears after his humiliation. He is no longer the most misfigured from all humans, but now the one who will be exalted and lifted up. Obviously the servant of god is not to be recognized at first glance, but a sort of "under cover" agent. Luke portrays Jesus as servant of god according to Dtjes. Traditionally this is understood alongside the pattern of promise and fulfillment. But this view overlooks the stucture of Jes 52,13-53,12 wich deals primarily with something that happened in the past. This is how the song wants to help to discover this secret of how god acts among humanity again and again. What does this mean to the relationship of the two testaments?

In this paper I hope to summarize Vitringa’s vision of how biblical interpretation should be carried out. I will briefly examine the secondary literature on Vitringa (especially van Heel, Diestel, Schrenk, Bauch, Witteveen, van der Wall and Childs), and then concentrate on those sections of Vitringa’s writings in which he outlines his ideal approach to the Bible. I want to explore how he saw the relationship of the testaments, looking for the categories he used and in what way the whole of the Bible informs the interpretation of the parts. I will examine what some have called his “prophetische Theologie,” particularly his view of the interaction of history and the biblical text. I note Vitringa’s major 17th-century conversation partners (esp. Cocceius his predecessor at Franeker but also Grotius and others). In particular I hope to trace some connections and contrasts between Vitringa and the exegetical approach of Cocceius, including for illustration the examination of a couple of sample texts in their respective commentaries on Isaiah. I conclude by suggesting a few ways in which Vitringa influenced figures notable in the development of 18th-century biblical studies and theology.

The Apocryphon of John enjoyed a fairly wide circulation in antiquity, as its manuscript evidence witnesses, and it is likely that its Nag Hammadi versions were read by fourth century monks before the burial of the codices. What interest did they take in the Apocryphon of John and how did they apply its views? This paper examines an aspect of the reception history of the long version of Apocryphon of John in the context of early Egyptian Christianity. Apoc. John II 18 discusses the origin of the demons in charge of different body parts. Numerous demons derive from matter who nourishes them as mother. They are associated with various passions, classified under the four chief passions (pleasure, desire, grief, and fear). Roots of this view lie in philosophical thought as well as astrology and magic, but this paper looks at how these ideas traveled further. A possible piece of evidence is found in the Nag Hammadi Codex VI. Authoritative Teaching (NHC VI, 3) is a late third to fourth century ascetic Christian homily that never quotes but often alludes to Christian scriptures. Most allusions derive from texts that later became canonical, but it appears that the Apoc. John is amongst them. Authoritative Teaching 23 states that material substance is the origin of desire that is the cause of human bodies. A connection with passions, or vices, is also emphasized. Although considerable differences exist between the two texts, there are grounds to assume knowledge of Apoc. John II 18 at the background. This paper investigates how and why Auth. Teach. applied these ideas.

This paper argues that to elaborate a critical theory of religion we need to understand biblical and religious discourse as archives of how gender and sexuality are publicly negotiated. In taking this approach, this paper will argue against attempts to propose critical biblical studies as an effort focused on “queering the bible” in order to recuperate better, more inclusive readings of biblical traditions. Instead I propose that we develop strategies to render legible the way in which these recuperations of biblical instances of “strong women” (such as Priscilla), “non-heternormative bonds” (such as Ruth and Naomi), or gender-inclusive language (such as Gal 3:28) remain embedded in larger discursive contexts that retain and intensify gendered and eroticized norms. Recuperations may expand, but fail to thoroughly question regimes of gender and sexual norms, such as the expansion of marriage to include same-sex couples intensifies the erotic privilege of the couple and the exclusion of other kinship arrangements. Hence this paper seeks to outline a queer epistemology for critical biblical studies that begins with the question “How not to already know?” What are the investments and commitments in our studying biblical and religious discourse around which taboos gather? From there this paper will argue that a critical biblical studies approach would not revolve around affirming or rejecting biblical discourses, but aim at giving us tools to loosen the affective grip that biblical images and stories hold, which effaces their long social histories, both on individual levels but even more so on the societal level where patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic, exclusionary patterns are ingrained in cultural and political institutions and in the shared sensibilities and discourses that end up sustaining them.

The discussions of the European Seminar have centered primarily on the problems related to the rapidly changing historical questions and perspectives within the field since the 1970s. Particularly questions related to the relevance of the Bible have been central, generally productive and helpful. In this brief paper, I will speak about one of the distortions that our preoccupation with the Bible's role in history writing has encouraged; namely, that related to the way we have overemphasized the importance of the regions of Israel and Jerusalem. I will use 3 examples to make my point: the Galilee, the northern coast and the southern highlands and steppe.

One common way of categorizing works in the Qumran collection is by distinguishing between sectarian and nonsectarian works (and those in between—whether called intermediate or presectarian). I propose to dismiss this dichotomy, and instead to identify and describe multiple clusters of texts, and their relations within the Qumran collection. Following the lead of Menahem Kister and Devorah Dimant, and in conversation with Dimant’s classic and recent work on the Qumran library, I take as a case study the cluster of Jubilees–Animal Apocalypse–CD*-Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, and the relation of this cluster of texts to other Dead Sea Scrolls.

In my paper, I will present a few dressing customs and symbolizations that are known in the Graeco-roman world and have a special meaning in the social and religious life of the era. These customs help us to understand better and easily basic facts and religious ideas of the New Testament, connected to conversion in Christianity and baptism, wedding, illness, healing, etc. Literature and art of the era provide us with useful elements to understand the social and religious background of the era.

The monumental oil painting “The Finding of Moses” (1904) by the adopted British Dutch painter, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, relates, in colors and forms, the Hellenistic humanistic interpretation of a biblical story. Although one of the most successful painters of the Victorian Era, it is only recently that his work has been rediscovered. In this paper, I argue that due to a newfound interest in the multiculturalism of the 1960s, “The Finding of Moses” is once again under the spotlight in the world of art. In the work, Alma-Tadema, inspired by Moses’ narrative (Ex 2:1-10), incorporates ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman classical motifs while using unconventional compositional devices such as abrupt cut-off at the edge of the canvas. At the same time, the artist is extremely sensitive to every detail and architectural line of marble settings he is depicting. The contents of his paintings reflect his extensive travels, first to Pompeii and then to Egypt, and his interest in their past as revealed by the popular archeological excavations of the late ninetieth century. He depicts what he sees in front of him. For example, in “Finding of Moses” he paints fresh flowers from Africa, rushing to finish the canvas before the flowers died. After his death, this work would prove to be his most successful.

Jacques Berlinerblau’s call for the ‘end of biblical interpretation’ as typically practiced by biblical scholars and his subsequent solution through a secular hermeneutics “that self-consciously aspires to achieve the status of a work of art” (2005, p. 78) raises a number of intriguing questions. How does Berlinerblau necessarily equate the ‘aesthetic’ with the ‘secular’? How do these terms operate? Has the aesthetic not been traditionally excluded from biblical criticism precisely because it raises the spectre of overtly religious or ‘enthusiastic’ interpretations? Berlinerblau’s trajectory from initially reconciling himself to biblical scholars’ strange ‘hybrid ideation’ of the religious and the secular/critical (2002), to his later ‘heckle mode’ (2005), followed by bemoaning the ‘unspeakable in biblical scholarship’ (2010), helps place his call for an ‘end to interpretation’ in context. With this context is in place, I go on to explore how his argument for a turn to an ‘aesthetic-secular hermeneutic’ is best questioned from a reception-historical standpoint. Using Yehuda Amichai’s poem ‘Jacob and the Angel’, I argue that this literary ‘act-event’, never simply ‘secular’ or ‘religious’, casts more light on how these two poles are enacted through writing but never finally decideable. In fact, reception-historical work demonstrates how the direction of movement between these poles is constitutive of what the ‘modern’ might mean. As such, I will suggest that one facet of reception history might be the provision of a more nuanced and interdisciplinary ‘space of literature’ where biblical criticism is seen as another form of writing around the Bible. I thus follow Berlinerblau in turning to aesthetic interpretations of biblical texts as a way of avoiding some of the traditional historical-critical manoeuvres but, in so doing, offer a broader and more complex view of how biblical scholarship proceeds and constitutes itself through the orientating binaries ‘religious/secular’ and ‘aesthetic/critical’.

My topic seeks to find the first expression of Israelite literature which would have been elaborated under the shadow of the Neo-Assyrian cultural influence. This occurred between the 9th to 8th BCE, before a transformation triggered off by theological viewpoints held in the southern kingdom of Judah between the 7th to 6th BCE. Thus, it shall be considering the first eleven chapters of Genesis, consisting primarily of Hebrew myths, for identifying this Neo-Assyrian influence for three reasons: -A comparative study of the ancient literature reveals that mythical literature has been the first and the most common type of literary expression of the ancient peoples. -It seems that the Hebrew myths were elaborated under the rule of the unified kingdom of David and Solomon following old Mesopotamian traditions or they were simply imitations of the Mesopotamian myths during the Judahite exile in Babylon when both cultures came into contact. However, we believe that the first experiment in creating that Hebrew literature in the Bible did not belong to the Babylonian literary heritage of the 6th century, but rather to the Neo-Assyrian culture of the 8th century BCE. -Generally, scholars have not considered the Hebrew myths to be relevant as a type of history, primarily because a modern, positivist and scientific form of historiography will not admit myth and legend as sources. However, it is not our aim to discuss the accuracy of the Biblical myths but to attempt to use them as a partial and limited source of historical data.

In the process of analyzing Genesis patriarchal narratives, biblical scholarship tends to see women as secondary characters. The focus of the sagas is, most often, the examination of the forces driving the Hebrew nation into existence. For many, the dialogue between Hagar and a messenger of the Deity in Gen. 16:7-14 is a departure because, as part of the salvation history, the story does not advance the plot in any way. However, this ‘dead end’ conversation is vital to the formulation of Hagar’s identity. By isolating these dialogue verses from the overall narrative the scholar creates a space where he or she is no longer dependent on the narrative analysis through line. Hagar, then, takes center stage in her own story. The influence of common discussions regarding power, social structure, and chosen versus unchosen influence, but no longer control, the examination of Hagar as an individual. Many scholars comment on an occasional exclusive element contained within this Hagar/Divine dialogue. They rarely, however, compile all the distinctive elements contained in these eight verses to address the significance of the total uniqueness of the Hagar/Divine relationship and it’s recognition of her personhood. This paper will employ narrative and textual analysis of Gen. 16:7-14 to demonstrate Hagar’s distinct place within the scriptures and prove that while she is an outsider to Israel, she is a unique, treasured and chosen individual to the God of Israel.

The assumption that the "Joel" named as recipient of the divine word in Joel 1:1 speaks throughout 1:2-2:17 has spurred attempts to divine the situation he addressed and to specify his social location. This effort to tease out the prophet's profile has deflected attention from the effects of the narrative frame provided by 1:2-4 and 2:18-19a. 1:2-3 exhort addressees to hear and recount "this" to their descendants. While "this" could refer to the severity of the locust infestation introduced by v. 4 ("Has anything this terrible happened before?"), the admonition to "recount it" (v. 3) makes little sense as mere insurance that later generations will know of the calamity, especially since sapperu, a verb characteristic of the Danklied, intimates a story of deliverance. Only by ignoring v. 3 can the question of v. 2 be taken simply as a lament of the distresses portrayed in 1:4-2:11. More likely, "this" encompasses the report of 1:4, the laments of 1:5-20, the warnings of 2:1-11, the oracles of 2:12-17, and the divine response in 2:19b-27. The consequent inference that neither the addressees nor the speaker of 1:2-3 participated in the events of 1:4-2:27 requires that we distinguish between the speaker in 1:2-4 and the speaker in 1:5-2:17, who is a character in Joel's story. Given the proximity of 1:2-4 to the superscription, it seems reasonable to identify their voice as Joel's (a literary fiction, in any case). His demand that "the elders and inhabitants of the land" attend to and recount events without parallel in either the recent or distant past renders both him and them observers rather than participants in the story. Accordingly, questions about Joel's role in the crisis seem less apt than asking what role the anonymous prophet's rhetoric in 1:5-2:17 plays in Joel's story.

One of the most striking features about the text known as 2 Clement is the extensive use of citations. The text probably dates from the mid-second century; as such, it can throw light on an otherwise murky period of early Christian history, not least for the developing ‘canon’ of Christian ‘scripture’ at this time. This paper focuses on the citations of traditions that later formed the New Testament, as well as other related traditions. Apart from citations from Jewish scripture, almost all the citations in 2 Clement are from Jesus traditions. The introductory formulae used here are discussed; all use a verb of speaking (rather than of writing), and almost all refer to speaking in the present: the words of ‘sacred’ tradition are thus regarded as speaking to the present with little awareness of their pastness. The Jesus traditions used in 2 Clement are compared with parallel versions found in the present canonical gospels. Some of the latter are found to be in material which is almost certainly redactional in those gospels; hence 2 Clement witnesses to a form of the tradition that post-dates the canonical gospels (at least of Matthew and Luke): it is not a witness to a form of the canonical gospel tradition which pre-dates those gospels. Further, some evidence suggests that the NT gospels are regarded as having the same status as that of Jewish scripture. Other citations appear to come from traditions which are independent of the canonical gospels; some have parallels in traditions known from non-canonical gospels, e.g. the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of the Egyptians. Clear evidence of knowledge and/or use of Pauline letters is lacking. 2 Clement thus attests a time of considerable fluidity and freedom in relation to issues about scripture and canonicity.

Both Hebrews and Sirach provide a review of the history of Israel. In doing so the authors are far from giving an aimless presentation of historical figures or facts, but instead appropriate history for their present. Hebrews 11 reviews the history of Israel with a primary emphasis on the faith exemplified by various characters of the biblical tradition. Ben Sira, however, provides the first historical review in wisdom literature some 250 years earlier, focusing on how wisdom propels history forward, through its embodiment in particular wise men and their deeds. This paper investigates the presentation of the biblical characters referred to in both scriptures. What does each text focus on? And what is the character’s “purpose” in Israel’s “history” according to Sirach or Hebrews?

The victory requires the divine assistance. In the Neo-Assyrian empire the priests (barû) who dealt with the divination of entrails participated in all military expeditions. They used catalogues of battle omens and strategic queries to decide about the strategy of war. One finds evidence for investigating the liver in the Bible (Ez 21. 26) and in the Greek world the seers took part in all the military campaigns. Alexander the Great surrounded himself with manteis, magoi, the Chaldean and Egyptian priests. The divine wisdom could be transmitted by the prophets. The most famous cases are known from the Bible, but the prophesying oracles of Ishtar of Arbela and Apollo in the Greek civilization played a similar role. The rulers who overused divination were severely punished by divine powers. The belief that disaster falls upon those who ignore omens goes back at least to the epic Legend of Naram-Sin. The Akkadian king inquires the gods of the pantheon by means of extispicy but when the signs are unfavorable, he ignores their will and continues the war. In the Bible, king Saul is defeated because he joins battle with the Philistines without favorable omens, being unable to obtain them through any of the means available to him: dreams, the Urim, prophets, or even necromancy (1 Sm 28-31). But how we should treat the material which seems to be consciously falsified, i.e. The Dynastic Prophecy (BM 40623)? The cases of god’s vengeance for disobedience can be found in the three traditions (D. S. 16.78.3, 2 Kgs 22). Could the purifiacatory rites reverse the divine wrath? All these cases prove us that the appropriate deciphering signs have a crucial meaning for taking fair decisions. The general question is, has the interpreting of the signs the same meaning and frequency of occurrence in these civilizations?

In the prophetic literature the question about the significance and relevance of the oracles concerning foreign nations is still ongoing. Based on the oracles concerning Egypt in the Book of Ezekiel (29-32) some issues can be run through. A comparison of the masoretic and greek text-form serve as starting point. The differences are showing special accentuations and interests. Here we have the possibility to ask about, which concepts and intentions remain in the background of the texts. These variants and versions change the accents of the meaning of the texts. The change in the text-forms makes the meaning look different. Conclusingly we can ask for the significance of the oracles concerning foreign nations in the context of each text-form.

The connection between Midrash and Piyyut has been mostly investigated only in one direction: the allusions of Aggadah and Midrashic traditions in the liturgical poetry. Very few attempts have been made to find the influence that the Piyyut language and ideas had on the writings of the sages, in what is called the classic period of Midrash (i.e. the Ammoraic period) and in the late period, which is partly parallel to the main poets, such as Yannai and R. Elazar Hakalir. While working on my dissertation, I found some interesting connections between Midrashic texts and some Piyyutim, both linguistic and content-related. My presentation will focus on selected examples of such connections in the Midrash literature, especially that of the Tanhuma-Yelamdenu genre - a group of Midrashic compositions, dated from the end of the Byzantine period and the early days of the Islamic occupation, presumably composed in Palestine and in the Jewish communities of Byzantium. The matters which I intend to present are mainly linguistic ones, but I will also focus on the verses cited both in the liturgical poetry and in the Midrashic works. The main example discussed in my presentation will be the connection between a Piyyut by R. Elazar Hakalir for the second Shabbat of Chanukah and the sermon about the sacrifices of the chieftains in 'Midrash Chadash', which belongs to the Tanhuma-Yelamdenu genre. The aim of my presentation is to show how the division of the ancient Jewish literature to separate sections such as 'Midrash' and 'Piyyut' might sometimes prevent us from noticing important links between these two kinds of creations, and furthermore - prevents us from seeing the cultural world of ancient Judaism at its whole stature.

This paper deals with the Semitic root nss, from which derives the Biblical nes. The root is generally considered an isolated Hebrew-only root, which was borrowed by Jewish and Christian Aramaic Bible translators into Aramaic. However, comparison of the root with related roots in other Semitic tongues will greatly enriches our understanding of both the attestations of the verbal root in Hebrew Scripture and the noun nes in the Bible. Moreover, the discovery of the title nss, most probably vocalized nassas, in two Hebrew inscriptions found in excavations at Tel Moza, sheds new light on the use of this root in Hebrew and Ammonite. Comparison with parallel titles in neighbor cultures leads to the conclusion that presumably this title was used to designate the bearer of a specific military position in the Judean and Ammonite Kingdoms respectively.

Maarten Noordtzij (1840-1915) was one of the first Dutch biblical scholars showing interest in the modern exploration of the Ancient Near East. He did not teach at one of the regular universities, but at a confessional institution, the Theological School of the Reformed Churches in Kampen. When his son Arie Noordtzij (1871-1944) went to Leiden University, Abraham Kuenen, professor of Old Testament, greeted him saying: 'So you are the son of that man from Kampen, who puts his trust in pots and pans'. Father and son Noordtzij played a significant part in the social and political emancipation of the reformed people in the Netherlands. In addition, they stimulated the study of the languages, history and cultures of the Ancient Near East, despite the lack of resources and a constant feeling of distrust in their own churches with regard to the reading of the Scriptures against their own cultural context. In 1912 Arie Noordtzij became professor of Old Testament at Utrecht University and during the 1920s and 1930s he frequently visited Palestine. The paper offers a sketch of their interest in the exploration of the Ancient Near East against the background of the relevant cultural and theological developments during the late 19th and early 20th century CE.

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The interest in this paper is Early Christian Spirituality. The word “spirituality” is used here denoting “a lived experience.” Therefore, the paper focuses on religious experience in an early Christian community as explicated in the first chapter of the First Epistle of John. Three different “lived experiences” are denoted here which culminates in the last one: “the having of fellowship with the divine.” The first two experiences (experience through senses, experience of the eternal life) path the way consecutively to establish the fellowship with the divine. For the author of 1 John the purpose (??a) of these “lived experiences” is to result in having complete joy, another form of experience. These three “lived experiences” express three different configurations of spirituality.

A discussion of the 1974 film, The Conversation, by Francis Ford Coppola serves as an introductory illustration of the dangers of interpretation in isolation. The film, starring Gene Hackman, highlights the contextual nature of communication, where the viewer becomes increasingly aware of the development of a skewed interpretation of an overheard conversation. Utterances and events are interpreted in isolation and perceived as ultimate truths. The social commentary offered by Coppola serves as an analogy for the dangers of exclusivist approaches to Biblical interpretation. This article critiques these approaches and offers contextual intercultural Bible reading as a life giving alternative approach that draws from the combined hermeneutical framework of Feminism and African hermeneutics. In this article I will explore the creative possibilities of the intercultural Bible reading process as a space with communal meaning making possibilities.

Both the American and the Dutch exegetical contexts have known the phenomenon of an 'Isaiah Workshop'. The Isaiah Workshop in the Netherlands (de Jesaja Werkplaats), established in 1974, decided to dissolve in 2011. The American Formation of the Book of Isaiah Group, started in 1990, still exists. Wim Beuken and Henk Leene have been founding fathers of the Dutch Isaiah Workshop; Roy Melugin and Marvin Sweeney have been key figures in the American one. Their views on the Isaiah-texts have been guiding for the exegetical research in either study group. Thus, in the Netherlands, dramatic plot and, later on, communication have been central issues; in America, the poetics of texts have always been at the centre of interest. Furthermore, both workshops have been precursors in bridging the gap between diachronic and synchronic analysis. In this paper, I will outline the histories of both Isaiah workshops and the exegetical developments within them. A remarkable outcome of this comparison is the fact that research into the unity of the 66 chapters of the Isaiah-book has been the starting point in America, whereas it turns out to be the final point in the Netherlands.

In contrast to non-sapiential books, in which wisdom is usually portrayed as a gift from God, sapiential books describe wisdom as a property that can be learned through education or as a commodity that can be acquired. This paper will semantically analyse the different metaphorical expressions for the acquisition of wisdom, in particular in Proverbs and in Job. The analysis will, on the one hand, provide a better insight in the way in which wisdom and its acquisition are conceptualised, while, on the other, it will allow for a better understanding of a number of particular biblical expressions.

The Gospels are narratives, and therefore basically literary texts to be studied like any other text of the narrative genre. It may be questioned, however, whether the words of Jesus would not merit a distinctive approach. Inside the Gospels the words of Jesus play a large role. Whilst rejecting the possibility of identifying ipsissima verba, study of these words per se needs to be explored apart from the narrative. In the first decades after the death of Jesus his words must have been memorized as of specific importance: a sacred heritage recorded orally, and possibly in written form. Later only they were woven into the fabric of the narrative. It is advocated to identify a new genre of studying these sacred words: the logia genre. This issue is discussed in terms of bible criticism and of its significance for Jesus studies.

Venice, 1517 AD. An illustrious merchant from Antwerp, Daniel van Bombergen, publishes the first Hebrew Bible with Targumim in print. This revolutionary and innovative product owes its name, ‘Biblia Rabbinica’, to the commentaries of major Rabbi’s which are included in the text, Rashi, Kimhi and Ibn Ezra. Within three decades, two more editions appear from the van Bombergen press among about two hundred rabbinical and Hebrew works - including Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi. For the complex tasks of editing and proofreading the sacred Biblical texts, Daniel hires Hebraists who are either apostate Jews (Felix Pratensis) or Jews (Jacob ben Hayim, though he would later become Christian, Elias Levita, Cornelio Adelkind). Jews at the time, it may be recalled, are forced to live segregated in Venice’s ghetto and suffer expulsions, property confiscations, and burnings of their books. In this session I will attempt to shed light on the somewhat unlikely relation between a wealthy, highly respected Flemish entrepreneur and Yacob ben Hayim, who suffered all the hardships of Jews, a contact which leads to the second Rabbinic Bible. Although we know that this Bibles gave to the world the very Textus Receptus of the Hebrew Bible for centuries, little research is conducted on it in its own right. Nor have we tried hard to relate its distinctive contents and features to the likely interaction between their editors and their earliest audiences. This session will address the questions why these Bibles were made the way they were made and for whom they were intended. Can we tell from textual and paratextual features if a Rabbinic Bible is intended for lucrative Jewish markets, for Christians Hebraists, or, indeed, has the van Bombergen Press made them so neutral that they would be appealing to both sides?

In this paper I will explore how the author uses language reminiscent of Heraclitus to describe the transformation of the the soul in baptism, and moves beyond Heraclitus with his concept of "the middle" as a place of fiery destruction. Comparing the references of the author to the opening chapters of Genesis with the allegorical exegesis of these narratives by Philo and Origen helps us to understand the author's conception of the fall and salvation of the soul.

(This belongs to the second sub-project): In 1 Peter 1:18-19 the author of 1 Peter states: “You know that you were ransomed from the futile lifestyle inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things, with silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish” (NRSV). This ransom imagery centres on the idea of slaves having been bought and paid for (1:18: elutrothête) and brought under the ownership of their new master (2:16: theou douloi) in God’s household (4:17: tou oikou tou theou). They are free from the old bondage (1:18: ek tês mataias humon anastrofês patroparadotou; 2:16: eleutheroi), but now have new responsibilities to their new master (2:16: theou douloi). This paper offers an interpretation of this ransom image in 1 Peter 1:18-19 within the economic context of the author and addressees, explaining the relevant structure of economics (the geography and demography of the areas identified in the address of 1 Peter) and relevant performance of economics (production, distribution and consumption) in the area where the addressees of 1 Peter lived.

There are quite a few pisqaot, spaces in the middle of a verse, in the books of Samuel. Some of these are connected to revelations of the LORD. This phenomenon cannot be explained on its own, but can best be seen within the placing of petuchot and setumot in these books. It appears that I-II Samuel know two different kinds of spaces; the first indicating chapters and paragraphs, the second indicating theologically important issues, like the revelations of God, prophetic words and confessions. The latter kind of spaces may affect our reading of the narrative, but it will appear that many modern translations do not follow this kind of spacing.

In this paper I discuss three concepts often used to capture processes that take place within reception history. The concepts under discussion are ‘intertextuality’, ‘pre-posterous history’ and ‘rhizomorphous system’, as developed by Jonathan Culler, Mieke Bal and Gilles Deleuze with Felix Guattari respectively. I will show how these concepts capture different aspects of the dynamics at work in reception history and illustrate this with examples taken from the story about the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:1-12, Mark 6:14-29), focusing especially on the role and representation of Herodias in that story.

The paper departs from a corpus-based analysis of a portion of the Biblical Greek lexicon. Attention is focused on the nouns associated with the semantic sphere of ‘Law’ and their Hebrew equivalents, within a well-defined and homogeneous textual corpus. The analysis is underpinned by a theoretical study of word-meaning representation, carried out within a lexicological framework which takes into account the flexibility produced by the context, in a range from inherent to selectional polysemy (Croft and Cruse: 2004; Pustejovsky 2008). It assumes the syntagmatic processes of sense modulation, which contribute to the determination of the meaning of complex syntagmatic structures (Pustejovsky 2006). This theoretical framework suggests new paths for scholars of Biblical Greek. The paper suggests the database WordClustering as a new lexicographical tool for the study of the Biblical Greek lexicon. This resource will enhance the possibilities available to scholars, supplying for example the following new features: • Search all the nominal heads of a given adjectival modifier; • Search all the direct objects of a given predicate; • Search all the occurrences of a given nominal/verbal phrase; • Cluster the readings of an inherently polisemous word (inherent polysemy occurs when multiple interpretations of an expression are due to the semantics inherent in the expression itself); • Cluster the readings of a word on the basis of selectional restrictions (selectional polysemy arises when a novel interpretation of an expression is due to context, namely, the type of the nominal selectee); • Cluster nouns on the basis of their type in terms of logical formalism. Offering a refined representation of semantic flexibility with regard to the processes of sense modulation, the database is also capable to show whether a regular pattern of polysemy in a given Greek noun matches its Hebrew equivalents.

Many an article has been written on biblical Hebrew style. Some have called the features determining this style “literary”, while others refer to them as “rhetorical” or “stylistic”. This paper will address the aptness of the applied labels and their possible alternatives. While previous approaches were literary and rhetorical critical in nature, scholars nowadays explore methods such as cognitive poetics and performative criticism. These frameworks support a view on biblical Hebrew features other than or at least beyond the literary.

The commandment to exterminate the people of Canaan is one of the most difficult texts of the OT. Therefore an interesting question is how this commandment in DT 7 has been interpreted in reception history. The paper deals with early reception history of the commandment in non-biblical writings, apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, NT, Rabbinic literature with ragrd to re-interpretation or justification of the rule. Then the question is aked if this law was applied to any other nations with the conclusion that no exact parallel can be found.

In secondary literature, the Christian kiss is frequently considered as a ritual. The first reference to the Christian kiss known to us is the holy kiss mentioned by Paul in his letters. Various scholars who tried to interpret the Christian kiss, started with the holy kiss. However, often they concentrated on later developments of the Christian kiss, because occurrences of these kisses are more frequently and clearly present in textual sources. The main purpose of my research is to concentrate on the significance of the holy kiss which Paul wrote about, and the meaning of kisses in early Christian communities in the first to the early fourth centuries. Therefore, textual sources from the second century before Christ until 313 after Christ will be considered. This material contains Christian, Jewish and pagan texts. In this paper, several sources will be highlighted which clarify the significance of the holy kiss. Furthermore, the question whether the holy kiss can be called a ritual will be discussed.

In the construction of spatiality, "partitioning" (as Foucault would have it), or the formation of the "enclosure," allows not only for the production of an object of knowledge, but prompted by the regulative procedures of a social order, also invests spaces with an almost inherent valorisation. The relations of power active in the production of demarcated space, not only allows for the disciplined production of knowledge within the boundaries of the enclosure, but it also enacts the principle of hierarchy, rendering some parts of more value than others, evoking reasons for boundaries, evaluating types of movement and mobility, thereby reproducing social order. How the interior body was embedded within a rhetoric of spatiality in antiquity is the objective of this paper. The point of departure is not a pre-discursive interior body upon which a rhetoric of spatiality has been inscribed, but an already rhetorically constructed object of knowledge in interaction with a rhetoric of spatiality. I argue that this interaction between a rhetoric of the interior body and a rhetoric of spatiality cooperates in the making of social order, thereby granting it a particular "naturalness." Few writings may illustrate the integration of space and body in an attempt stabilize a wavering social order as well as the De Opificio Dei of Lactantius, especially in his problematisation of a Lucretian Epicureanism, yielding not to demarcation but to fragmentation of space.

Leo Boer, a former student of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem recorded his journey through the Levant and his stay in Jerusalem in the mid-1950s by writing an account of his travels as well as taking photographs. The record – which concerns Israel and Transjordan in particular – reflects the historical and archaeological state of affairs at the time and can therefore be considered to be valuable for scientific research in this area. This paper casts a glance at the document and reveals the significance of the account and the photographic material for the archaeology of sites like ancient Jericho and Qumran.

The Laws (Nomoi) of Plato were written circa 360-350 BCE. Conceived as more concrete version of the Republic, the ideal State of the Laws bears a significant resemblance with biblical Israel. Both consist in a conquered land divided into twelve tribes by lottery, which will then be subdivided according to paternal families. There are about fifty laws in common between the Laws and the Pentateuch, and sometimes there are series of similar laws in the same order in both texts. While Eusebius of Caesarea compared these texts in his Preaparatio evangelica and concluded that Plato could only have copied Moses, the current state of biblical studies, assuming a final redaction of Genesis-Kings during the Persian or Hellenistic eras, allows one to raise the possibility of a platonic influence on the Bible’s redaction. I suggest in this paper that several biblical narratives were conceived from Greek myths rewritten according to Plato’s standards as detailed in the Republic and the Laws, by choosing sometimes the very examples he used; such as Ouranos’ castration by his son Cronos (Hesiod, Theogony, 140-210; criticized by Plato in Republic 377 b) compared to Ham’s indecent act against his father Noah (Gen. 9:20-27); and the lying dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon (Homer, Iliad II, 1-50; criticized by Plato in Rep. 382e-383b) compared to the lying spirit sent by God to the prophets against Ahab (1 Kgs 22:1-23).

Loder occupies a significant position of continuity and critique in the broad movement of late twentieth century developmentalism. While extending the ‘bandwidth’ of developmental dimensions from his predecessors (Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg and Fowler), Loder simultaneously claims a perpendicular angle – of contra-linear action and motion; the transformative moment. Paul occupies a significant position of continuity and critique in the broad movement of the early to mid first century discipleship community. While extending the ‘bandwidth’ of discipleship dimensions from his predecessors and contemporaries (Post-Exilic Jewish Faith, James, Peter, Apollos), Paul simultaneously claims a perpendicular angle – of contra-linear action and motion; the cross of Christ. This paper, grounded primarily in the tradition of Biblical exegesis, seeks to place both Loder and Paul in conversation with the discourses of developmentalism. We will explore Paul’s use of child and childhood imagery in a radical revisioning against claims of status in the early Christian community. Likewise, we will engage Loder’s re-imagining of ‘Stage Theory’. Drawing together the voices of Paul and Loder with a common thread of ‘disruption’ (the transforming moment and the cruciform Christ) I will suggest several ways in which they resist ‘developmentalism’ as an over arching ethic. I will contend that culturalised developmentalism has contaminated our readings of Paul. Paul’s vision for life in Christ is non-progressive, and radically downwardly mobile. Loder, though operating in a developmental framework, also offers a disruptive transformation of developmental expectations, which are consistent with the radical ethic of Pauline reversals of status.

The place of the city gate in ancient Israel served a variety of social functions for a community’s security, trade, and judicial matters. Contracts, legal decisions, and treaty negotiations occurred there as the locus point for the authority of the elders of the city. The city’s security was defined there by inspection of would-be visitors, and displays of the heads of vanquished enemies (Josh 8:29; 2 Kgs 10:8; Judith 8:32). Physical entry was of course conferred at the city gate, but so too were a variety of the social privileges attendant to those living within the walls. Symbolically it functioned as the site for distinguishing outsiders from insiders, city elders from the general citizenry, prostitutes from marriageable women (Josh 2:1; Ruth 4:1), and legal claims and punishments. The city gate was a space for marking substantial change in social status for the intramural community, e.g., Boaz is granted redeemer status for Naomi’s land, Absalom’s death is lamented as son and as heir to the throne. In addition, we can presume that a host of informal transactions occurred at the gate in the manner of bartering, gossip, news and weather reports from afar, etc. All of these activities make the city gate a vital center for understanding Israel’s social boundaries, both intramural and extramural. With the aid of current work in cultural memory and ritual theory on liminality, this paper will probe how the city gate functioned symbolically in marking status shifts and the reimagining of Israel’s social identity long after city gates were destroyed in the Babylonian destruction.

In the parlance of bible film scholars, Intolerance is a Christ-figure film, not a Jesus film. More talisman than character in early film (Keil), Jesus appears in a mere seventeen minutes of the three-hour Intolerance, and these Jesus-sequences function as interpretative touchstone for Intolerance’s more developed stories about the pious’ oppression of innocents. The Boy, whose passion is intercut with that of Jesus, is the most fully developed Christ figure, but Intolerance renders all its suffering innocents Christ-like (cf. the 2006 Son of Man). As this transfiguration reverses the trajectory of the development of Jesus’ passion narrative out of Jewish suffering innocent stories (cf. Crossan), it significantly undercuts Jesus’ (theological) uniqueness. Does this lead some to concentrate only on the Jesus segments? While the Christ-figure approach interprets Intolerance more comprehensively than a Jesus-film approach, bible film scholars might find more illumination in film study analyses. For those not obsessed with Jesus, one of Intolerance’s most notable features is its intercutting of its four stories. Film historians consider Griffith one of the prototypical practitioners of parallel montage (cf. Deleuze). As Deleuze argues that a film’s “Idea” arises from its particular montage, one might return to bible film studies by observing that the montage’s effect (and that of the repeated “out of the cradle” scene) resembles that of the canon’s four “Gospel according to …” harmony. Both create a sense of providence (or at least of Nietzsche’s monumental history). Both claim to display the “way the world wags” and the world in which the observer lives (cf. Frei). Griffith’s apocalyptic finale arises from this montage, corroborates its effect, and emphasizes Intolerance’s rejection of a progressive Social Gospel (cf. The Birth of a Nation). Here, Intolerance portends the increasingly apocalyptic and libertarian nature of twentieth-century U.S. film (and popular religion).

It is generally held that P is opposed to marriage between Israelites and foreigners. This is so notwithstanding the Hebrew Bible’s lack of P legislation explicitly prohibiting inter-marriage, and the limitation of a prohibition against inter-marriage in H to the High Priest. Consequently, interpreters regularly look to P narrative to ground a more general prohibition. Often the passages Gen 26:34-35 and 27:49-28:9 are cited to this end. This paper will focus on the brief passage Gen 26:34-35 as a means of exploring the complexities of reading biblical narrative for the grounding of legal norms. Although a surface reading of these verses may appear to indicate a clear editorial opposition to inter-marriage, a closer reading reveals that the task of interpretation of this very brief portion of text is far from straightforward. A range of viable interpretations of the verses will be suggested, some of which indicate opposition to inter-marriage and some of which do not, highlighting the hazards inherent in reading narrative as law.

This paper treats a number of textual variants, related to violence and the image of God or Jesus, that scribes through the transmission history may have perceived as difficult or apalling and tried to soften.

According to biblical historiography judges ruled Israel before kingship was established. In the light of the vast space devoted to the establishment of institutions of leadership in Israel, it seems that the shift from 'judgeship' to 'kingship' filled a major role in biblical worldview. This paper will investigate the biblical conception of the initiation of leadership in ancient Israel in the light of the model reflected in the myth of Enuma Elish. It will suggest that similar literary and conceptual patterns govern both Marduk's rise to power, and the initiation of kingship according to the Bible. In this case, these corresponding patterns do not reflect a genealogical relationship between the two bodies of literature, but they point to a common set of beliefs regarding the creation of political institutions, and they offer to shed new light on the literary history of the book of Judges.

This paper will highlight the pattern of Tanhuma Yelammedenu (TY) texts to generate new moments of confrontation between biblical heroes and God as a solution to textual or ethical problems found in Scripture. The reflex to interpret non-confrontational biblical moments as confrontational ones reflects the distinctive ethical and theological views of the TY authors. It points to a new cultural and theological sensibility that emerges during the post-classical period (6th-7th c. Byzantine Palestine) — one that supports and valorizes the image of humans complaining to or challenging God. In the past, scholars of rabbinic literature have merely analyzed these Tanhuma-Yelammedenu Midrashim for their literary distinctiveness – but not their theological content. They have shown how these texts represent a watershed moment in rabbinic literature wherein Midrash begins to be less interested in exegesis and more interested in presenting a re-written biblical narrative that has been liberated from the constraints of Scriptural proof texts. Yet, their work does not explore the potential theological implications and exploitations that a turn towards “narrativity” can offer. This paper will note how this literary turn was exploited by the TY editors to fuel their theology of protest.

Recent studies of religion in the Roman Empire draw attention to the activities of independent specialists, self-styled experts in novel, often exotic, wisdom and practices. This scholarly attention is warranted by the considerable amount of evidence for such figures, especially in Rome itself, where the first centuries BCE/CE witnessed a diversification of specialized religious services and escalating efforts to regulate their influence. One prominent index of this phenomenon is the periodic expulsion of varieties of specialists from the city. It has been argued that these measures targeted specific types of religious actors, such as unaffiliated astrologers, as opposed to broad cultural entities, such as astrology. Nevertheless, whenever Judeans appear in expulsion sources this is taken to refer to an entire community. This paper proposes a reframing of evidence for Judean expulsions within a broader class of religious activity, the religion of independent specialists. The methodological justification is simple: Judeans appear in our sources alongside of social types whom we grant to be unauthorized purveyors of religious expertise, like Chaldeans, magi, and other divinatory experts. My approach differs from dominant interpretations that view these expulsions either as symbolic reassertions of Roman values, or as responses to widespread proselytism and conversion to Judaism. While the former approach overlooks concrete concerns generated by specialist activity, the latter sets Judeans, and engagement with Judean religion, into a unique and singular analytic category. To consider rather that these measures targeted Judeans who acted as religious experts for a non-Judean audience locates Judeans within a salient religious phenomenon attested by a variety of evidence. It also parses Roman Judeans in such a way that expulsion legislation intended a particular and more historically plausible target than the city’s whole population of ethnic Judeans.

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Reviewing the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of Jonah can be a fascinating and stimulating enterprise as Yvonne Sherwood has demonstrated. This paper seeks to trace the reception history with selected topics in mind and with a focus on particular texts. Rüdiger Lux has identified three important topics that are connected in the book of Jonah: the function and limitation of prophecy of judgment, YHWH’s relationship to the nations, and the function of creation theology. The significance of these topics (and the lack thereof) in various canonical contexts and its relationship to additional texts illustrate the varying perspectives on the prophet Jonah within Second Temple Judaism (Septuagint, Josephus, The Lives of the Prophets), within Early Christianity (Synoptic Gospels, Church Fathers) and within Islam (Koran, The Lives of the Prophets). The overlap and differences between these traditions also require a reflection on the characteristics and the extent of their interaction.

The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), developing Gen 6:1–4, traces the origin of evil in the world to the rebellion of the watchers. These divine beings, having bound themselves by an oath, abandon their appointed places and roles in the cosmos in order to descend to earth to have sexual intercourse with human women. Along with this, the watchers reveal secrets to humans, such as metallurgy, cosmetics, and sorcery. The offspring of these unions are the giants, who bring tremendous disorder and violence to the earth. Most scholars agree that the giants represent Alexander’s successors, who plunge the world into chaos, disorder, violence and terror. Rather than providing elaborate descriptions of the giants’ physical features, 1 Enoch 7:1–6 and 10:9–10 focuses on their brutal activities and on their (cosmic) sexual-social status as “bastards”— the products of illicit sexual unions. Drawing on theorists such as Mary Douglas and Mikhail Bakhtin, I will demonstrate how their illegitimate status represents the embodiment of the angelic rebellion in the cosmos and the way in which their violent behavior represents the ultimate “historical” result of that disorder. However, the story of the giants does not quite end in their destructive wars against one another. In a continuing interpretation of the primary myth, the spirits of the dead giants continue in the world as demons (14:24–16:4). Again, their illegitimate status as products of divine-human relations leaves them as taxonomical oddities–neither divine nor human. Now dis-embodied, they carry out violence against humans in new forms.

2011 witnessed numerous international celebrations of The King James Version of the Bible as the embodiment of a century of Early Modern biblical scholarship and the paragon of Early Modern translation in the new medium of print. Though the KJV has been praised for its enduring and resounding qualities and its phenomenal legacy within the literary tradition, it has not generally been a point of praise in film criticism. Indeed, it has often been regarded as alienating or out-of-step with the language and culture of its modern viewing audience and in conflict with the aims of communicating a vision of Jesus in film language. Even in silent films the awkward presence of the KJV has been felt, for instance in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) and DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927). The silent film presents Jesus in the language of the medium, making his body the text which speaks through deictic gesture, but it is in competition with the authority of the written word which is variously introduced in a paratextual relationship to it. In this paper I will argue that the struggles between the visual and the verbal realisations of Jesus represent an evolution of precisely the textual and paratextual struggles that were enacted in the Early Modern bibles themselves. King James’ insistence that his Bible should have no annoying paratexts did not prevent his Bible from becoming a source of them.

Several times within 1 Corinthians Paul encourages the Corinthians to imitate him. These are found at critical junctures in the epistle in 1 Cor 4:16 and 11:1. The meaning of these sections is in question from the perspective of scholars on Corinthians. Several believe that Paul is appealing to apostolic power and authority to coerce the Corinthians to obey him. This is not the perspective of imitation and discipleship that are found within the writings of Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius specifically speaks about discipleship and imitation in several places: Ign. Eph. 1.2.4, 3.1-3, Ign. Magn. 4.1, 5.1-2, 9.1-6, Ign. Rom. 3.1.2, 6.3.1. When these passages are considered, imitation involves suffering and possibly martyrdom. Imitation is also connected to the cross of Christ and does not lead to superiority. Pauline ideas, specifically those from 1 Corinthians, are known to have influenced Ignatius of Antioch's writing, and thus Ignatius' ideas about imitation could well reflect the meaning that Paul intended. Ignatius' view of imitation would contradict the opinions of some scholars who see Paul’s injunction for imitation as a claim for power.

Since at least the nineteenth century, biblical critics have placed a pronounced emphasis on the polyvalence of kingship in the Hebrew Bible. The Bible’s assessment of past kingship is seemingly ambiguous, and its vision of future, utopian kingship is also muddled. The polyvalence of kingship in the Bible thus presents a fascinating avenue for exploring socio-cultural memories in the ancient world. It is especially interesting when one considers biblical kingship from the perspective of the post-monarchic Persian period, the era when many of the texts dealing with kingship took their essentially final form. How did the biblical idea(s) of kingship, a memory-evoking institution from the community’s past, inform understandings of that past, as well as understandings of the present and future within the socio-cultural milieu of Persian-period Judah? In other words, how might the polyvalence of kingship in particular texts of the Hebrew Bible have contributed to the discursive formation of the post-monarchic community’s understanding of history, of its own story? In this paper, drawing from the likes of Hayden White and Paul Ricoeur, I will explore how the community’s socio-mental constructions of its past impacted its understandings of divine and human royal authority in its present and future. Specifically, I will look at how social memories of leading figures from before the institution of monarchy (e.g., the Patriarchs, Moses, Samuel) impacted the emplotments of kingship throughout the biblical texts. This will give some insight into how the Persian-period community in Jerusalem negotiated the formation of its socio-cultural identity in terms of monarchical power and authority.

As a rule, Jesus' sayings and discourses in the Synoptic Gospels are integrated into a narrative framework and introduced at least by a remark like "Jesus said (to them)" - there are some notable exceptions e.g. in Luke 12 and 17. When it comes to the question of previous stages (e.g. Q) and the development of the sayings tradition, however, it often turns out that the narrarive introduction, brief as it may be, is often the work of the final redaction, and often it is hardly possible to arrive at a positive judgement about the narrative introduction to sayings or discourses at earlier stages in the tradition. A prominent example would be the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount/Plain (Matt 5:1-2 par. Luke 6:20). The aim of this paper is to explore the implications this has for a narratological approach to Q (as it has recently become popular) and, more generally, for the concept of sayings tradition. A major point of comparison is the Gospel of Thomas, where many - but by no means all - sayings come with the narrative introduction "Jesus said ..."

A research which I have done about the Hebrew of the Tanhuma Literature revealed that there are significant linguistics differences between the manuscripts of the complete Tanhuma editions – Tanhuma "Printed Edition" and Tanhuma "Buber Edition" – and some Genizah fragments of lost Tanhuma editions (one of them is the fragment considered by Prof. M. Bregman as a survivor of the early layer of the Tanhuma). Those differences seem to be similar to the kind of differences between old manuscripts of Chazal literature and the printed editions of it: The main linguistic characteristics of those two complete editions' manuscripts are pretty similar to the late sources of the Tannaic and Amoraic language. On the other hand, the language of the amputated Tanhuma editions from the Genizah is very close to the Tannaic and Amoraic Hebrew as it appears in the ancient manuscripts. In the lecture, I want to introduce a few examples of those differences, and to discuss the reason of this situation: The complete Tanhuma Editions` versions may be faulty. But it is also possible that the Genizah fragments represent an early layer of Tanhuma creation, while the complete editions represent a later one – a distinction which appears in the linguistic characteristics as well.

1 Enoch 100 depicts a final judgment in which angels, heavenly bodies, and meteorological elements serve as God’s informants regarding humankind, giving testimony about their deeds, while elements of the natural world are portrayed as God's instruments for exercising judgment. According to 100:10, "inquiries" will be made made of the angels, sun, moon, and stars regarding the deeds of the unrighteous. In the following verse, the absence of clouds, mist, dew, and rain will serve as testimony against sinners, and in verse 13, snow, frost, cold, and winds are unleashed against them. Similarly, in 1 Enoch 104, light and darkness/day and night are said to observe the deeds of sinners (104:7-8), while angels speak on behalf of the righteous (104:1). Comparatively, the role of angels is amplified in 2 Enoch 19, in which the archangels who reside in the sixth heaven are portrayed as regulating the movements of the stars, as well as possessing authority over seasons and years, rivers and oceans, fruits, grass, and living things in general. In 2 Enoch’s long recension, these archangels also keep a record of the deeds of human souls, apparently collecting information for the sake of judgment. In this text, then, the connection between judgment and nature, though indirect, is maintained by angelic involvement in both. In this paper, I will explore these depictions of the natural world in light of other portrayals of nature in 1 Enoch, especially nature as an orderly model for human righteousness and nature as a disorderly sign of impending judgment. I will explore the tensions between these portrayals, while suggesting that the many roles played by the natural world are rooted in its fundamental identity as God's orderly, obedient creation which, as humanity's exemplar, is "qualified" to participate in humanity's judgment.

This paper will draw on texts and material artifacts to establish the use of cosmology in Roman imperial ideology as a context for illuminating the heaven and earth motif of the book of Revelation, focusing on the Beast’s blasphemy in Revelation 13:4-8. Revelation 13:6 is a summary statement of the dimension of Roman imperial ideology considered blasphemous by John. One aspect of the Beast’s blasphemy was directed against those who dwell in heaven (to ourano skenountas), who are to be identified as the martyred saints. The heavenly realm is a significant concern of the apocalyptic genre often representing the pole of spatial transcendence that is one of the genre’s defining characteristics. In the book of Revelation, the heavenly location of the martyred saints vindicates their suffering on earth as well as the justice of God. The heavenly realm was also a key element in Roman imperial ideology. It was used to establish that Roman rule on earth was in harmony with heaven, that Rome ruled in heaven, and that from heaven Rome ruled the earth. These concepts were expressed in Roman literature, art and coinage. The Astronomica of Marcus Manilius is a prime example of how a stoic, astrological cosmology could convey the idea of the Roman Empire conquering the cosmos; embracing both heaven and earth. The Beast’s blasphemy against those who dwell in heaven can be understood in this context of competition for the territory of heaven. The Beast’s blasphemy consists in arrogantly claiming heaven as its own and thereby denying the vindication of the saints’ righteous deaths.

According to some studies, the epic story of Danel (KTU 1.17-1.19) and the story of the Biblical Abraham (Gen 15-21) have some similar motifs: In both stories we find a hero which is a respectable man and loved by the gods. The hero is childless, but he is given a son by the gods after feeding them. In my lecture, I will present these known motifs. Secondly, I wish to show that the story of Isaac and Ishmael share some motifs with the story of Aqhat, Danel's son. The positive motifs (the joy, laughter and the banquet) were given to the Isaac story, and the negative ones (the desert and the bow) were given to the Ishmael story. Thirdly, according to the evidences that will be presented, I wish to argue of the possibility that the Biblical writer was inspired by the well-known story of Danel (see the possible mentioning of Danel in Ez 14), and he used some of its motifs in order to highlight the difference between Isaac and Ishmael to the reader.

One of the many stylistic devices shared by ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Literature including Egyptian Wisdom, the Proverbs of Ahiqar, Hebrew Scripture, Sirach, and Rabbinic Literature is the so-called "Better" proverb. This rhetorical device, which was studied by Baumgartner in 1914, Bryce (1972), Ogden (1977) and others is found in numerous Rabbinic aphorisms. Rabbinic aphorisms exhibit a variety of stylistic, structural and linguistic changes vis-à-vis the Biblical examples. Typical biblical examples include Koh 7:1, "Better is a good name than good oil and the day of one's death than the day of one's birth"; Prov 16:32, "Better is patience than might and one who rules over his/her spirit than one who conquers a city." Similarly, in Hebrew Sirach (ed. Segal) 25:19: "It is better to dwell with a lion or a dragon/crocodile than to dwell with an evil woman." The Rabbinic proverbs in Mishnaic Hebrew and Western and Eastern Aramaic employ synonyms or substitutes for the older adjective "better" as well as grammatical variations (feminine and plural). Typical are the following: A small cucumber/zucchini is better than a large pumpkin (Babli Ketubbot 83b); "Better is a bird in the hand than a hundred flying birds" (Kohelet Rabbah 4); "Dearer [habibah; feminine] is the recital of the Shema at its proper time than the presentation of thousands of burnt offerings by a fool" (Koheleth Rabbah 4); "A sage [the reference may well be to a Rabbinic authority who calls himself hakam 'sage'] is preferable to a prophet" (Babl Bava Batra 12a). Especially interesting is the manner in which the adaptation of the older stereotyped "better" proverb to new stylistic forms goes hand and glove with the evolution of ideas and value-laden terms in Rabbinic aphorisms.

Early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism developed the tradition of interpretation already known to us from Hellenistic Jewish exegesis. The general perception of Alexandrian Jewish thought that both the Torah and Wisdom are related to creation and are considered to be universal is well known. The present paper explores the formation of the concept of the Torah as a light in early Judaism and Christianity. The creation narrative which starts with Light was central to both traditions (Genesis 1:1-3; John 1:1-4). The light is inseparable from the Torah (Exod 19: 16; 34: 29; Ps. 1; 119; etc.). Jesus is presented as the Light and the New Torah and his mission is to bring the divine light, the Truth that will make people free (John 1:1-4; 8:12-32). The end of the first century BC is considered to be the beginning of the growth of the new Jewish world view, which is developed more fully in the later period of the Mishnah and Talmud. After the loss of the Jerusalem Temple in the first Jewish revolt (66-70 CE) and the humiliation of the Jews after their defeat in the two other revolts that followed, the Torah is coming to take a central place in Jewish thought, and is becoming the foundation for its tradition of interpretation. This paper focusses on the messianic perceptions of early Judaism and Christianity that are connected with the light of the Torah. It will be shown by this analysis that the later traditions preserved by Midrashim and Talmuds have their roots in the Jewish Apocalyptic of the Second Temple period. The concept of the Torah as Light pointed and still points toward a polyphonic horizon for the contemporary reader. The development of such a concept strengthened both Judaism and Christianity, making both more creative and fruitful.

Noah does it, Abraham does it, and so do Isaac and Jacob. They build altars. These ritualized acts almost always appear at the ends of their narratives, after the story’s issues have been resolved. How the altar is built or what occurs once the altar is built is usually only minimally described, and often with formulaic language. Yet the presence of the ritual is a major stabilizing force for the story, both for the characters and for readers. The ritual reinforces themes and subtly introduces new ones. It reinforces relationships. It suggests to the reader that all the activity of the story has been completed, yet at the same time it tantalizingly connects it to the future. I will examine one narrative in Genesis and show how this works. In Genesis 12, Abraham leaves for Canaan and after arriving, builds first one altar and then a second. This shows his loyalty to God – a theme that stands out in the life of Abraham. The locations of the altars are specified, and these become important as the story of Israel in Canaan develops. Even the fact that Abraham builds altars is significant and may suggest that the authors of the story equated Abraham’s stature with that of a king, since in the period of the Israelite monarchy, only a king could build or raise an altar. In the flow of the story the reader understands that Abraham is constantly moving about, yet the reader understands that this activity stops when an altar is built and used. The state of repose is transferred from the character to the reader who then realizes, and accepts, that the activity of the narrative is over.

Though female characters play a relatively insignificant role in the biblical book of Job, a full 107 of the Testament of Job’s 388 verses are concerned with women, a concern which has warranted a great deal of scholarly attention. Much of this attention has been concerned with what some have perceived as being the contradictory attitudes towards women in different parts of the book. This perceived contradiction lies in the discrepancy between the portrayal of Job’s wife and servants, who are repeatedly misled by Satan (1-46), and Job’s daughters, who are granted visionary experience and fellowship with the angels (46-53). Discussion has focused on whether the text is positive or negative in its portrayal of women, or whether there is a seeming contradiction between the portrayals of Job’s wife and female servants, on the one hand, and the daughters on the other. This paper undertakes review of these debates in light of new developments in the critical study of gender in order to suggest that both Job and his daughters subvert ancient paradigms of masculinity and femininity. The paper then demonstrates that the privileges of Job’s daughters relate not only to their gender and but also to their covenantal identity as part of a “chosen and honored race.”

There are no laws in the Hebrew Bible concerning divorce procedures, including under what circumstances divorce is allowed, as well as what rights or obligations may be involved. In Deut, 24:1-4, however, there is a law which prohibits remarriage to the same man if after being divorced the divorcee has married another man. From this law and from other passages in the Hebrew Bible the Rabbis of the Talmud as well as modern scholars have tried to come up with solutions to the above mentioned issues. The Biblical law is enigmatic and various explanations have been offered, but none of them are without difficulties. One difficulty is that marriage of a divorcee to another man and divorce from him does not contradict the law, and even marriage to a third man is legitimate. A unique and refreshing solution has been proposed by Raymond Westbrook twenty five years ago. This proposition as well as others are re-examined in this paper, and another solution is presented. Its core is that 'remarriage' is in fact considered as restoration of former marriage. As a result, if during the intermediate period the woman had sexual relations with another man they are considered as fornication; therefore, such a situation is called an 'abomination'. Thus it is clear why remarriage is also prohibited in cases of death of the second husband, and why if the woman divorced the second husband there is no objection to her marriage to a third husband.

Luke often places marginalized persons in the centre. In 7:36-50, he tells the story of a "sinful" woman anointing Jesus' feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The narrative first leads the reader to sympathize with Simon who invited Jesus: He is surprised by the fact that Jesus as a prophet allows the "sinful" woman to touch him (7:39). But it is interesting to observe how the author of the third gospel manages to change the perspective on the woman in the dialogue between Jesus and Simon (7:40-47) in a subtle way. Jesus tells the parable of the two debtors (7:41-42) in order to show the Pharisee that the woman is not only to be seen as a sinner, but also - and even more - as one who loves much (7:44-46), because her sins, which were many, have been forgiven (7:47). The narrative analysis of Luke 7:36-50, a comparison with other Lukan symposium stories and with the synoptic parallels of this anointing narrative (Mark 14:3-9; Matt 26:6-13; John 12:1-8) elucidate that Luke portrays Jesus here as a prophet (7:39), teacher (7:40), and as a "friend of sinners" (7:34). Jesus' look at the "sinners" is a loving and understanding one, and he invites others, especially the "(self-)righteous", to change their perspective on the "sinners".

Besides Christ the most intriguing character in Jesus movies is Judas Iscariot, insofar he is developping and undergoing a dramatic shift from follower to betrayer. It will be interesting to have a closer look on the portrayals of Judas in the first two German silent Jesus movies „Der Galiläer“ (Dir.: Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1921) and, especially, „I.N.R.I.“ (Dir.: Robert Wiene, 1923) – also in comparison to other movies of the 1920s: to „Leaves From Satan’s Book“ by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1921) and to Cecil B. DeMille’s „The King of Kings“ (1927). The two German movies are openly antisemitic in their depiction of Jewish authorities like the Pharisees or the Priest. Is then also Judas – as so often in the history of theology and of the arts – just another prominent representative of the ‚evil Jews’? Or does he gain an individual profile that connects already his portrayal in these early German movies to the newer efforts to have a fresh look on Judas and reconstruct his role in a more positive perspective, like later on Nikos Kazantzakis and Martin Scorsese have done in „The Last Temptation of Christ“ (1988)?

A very short pericope of the Gospel of Luke narrates the visit that Jesus paid to the home of two sisters, Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). Throughout the centuries, this passage has been read and understood in many different ways, and the secondary literature is numerous. The relationship between the sisters has been diversely interpreted in the Biblical commentaries, the question being all the more debated for its connection to the status and role of women as well as the importance of the family link. Depending on the moment and on the commentator, the characters of Mary and Martha have been used either as models to reinforce moral values, or to criticise ethical choices, all interpretations being put to service of different world visions; Thus, this brief narrative gives access to a great variety of examples of the use of the biblical text by its readers. In a two-way movement, we will seek to find out which definition of sibling relationship underlies the hermeneutics. Meanwhile, we will also try to determine which elements of this episode have served as a basis to help build a Christian definition of sisterhood/brotherhood.